


Memory Lane

by queentangerine



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Community: deancasbigbang, Dean/Cas Big Bang Challenge 2015, Drama, Gen, Heaven, Kinda, M/M, Mark of Cain, Road Trips, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-14
Updated: 2015-11-13
Packaged: 2018-05-01 09:48:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 43,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5201369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queentangerine/pseuds/queentangerine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the demon runs them off the road, Dean lies dying in a hospital. And then he’s <i>dead</i>, and he thinks he’s in heaven, but he doesn’t know how he got there. And then there’s some angel calling himself Castiel telling him “I’m sorry. You weren't supposed to die".</p><p>DCBB 15</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. PART ONE

**Author's Note:**

> First year participating in DCBB, excited to be here, and hope you are too!  
> Little touch and go there for a while trying to get this done, but HEY here it is.
> 
> THANK YOU to [bowandbow](http://bowandbow.tumblr.com) for the lovely works of art and to [deanghostchester](http://deanghostchester.tumblr.com)([AO3](http://archiveofourown.org/users/viviansface/profile)) for betaing! You're both awesome.
> 
>  
> 
> Art masterpost [here](http://bowandbow.tumblr.com/post/133136885079/dcbb-2015-art-masterpost-for-memory-lane-by).

 

Dean has been sitting behind the wheel of his parked Impala for three days. The key is in the ignition, and every so often he reaches out, intent on turning it to bring the car to life, but he always stops, hand poised, fingers brushing along the metal.

It can't possibly have been three days and yet he's watched the sun rise and set twice each, all while lost in his continual contemplation of motion. As he looks out in front of him the sky starts turning red again. Sunset number three.

He likes the sunsets because the clouds morph magically and magnificently, but try as he might he can never quite make out the images they form, glowing orange and red and pink with flashes of the _bluest_ blue sky he's ever seen leaking out around the edges. He can almost see faces and wings and monsters beyond imagination towering over the lands that lay before him. But every time he tries to define one it's like trying looking through water swirling down a drain, distorting reality into fragments and refractions, or it blurs beyond recognition, or the sun peeks out from behind the clouds and blinds him. It's frustrating, but undeniably beautiful all the same.

He had been driving, and then somehow he wasn’t. The engine is still warm but he hasn’t moved in _three fucking days_. He isn't stiff, he isn't tired, and he isn't hungry, strangest of all, but there’s a dull ache in his right arm he can’t explain. 

He sets the car to battery a few times to try the radio but he always turns it right back off, because whenever he tries to play music he just gets static. High pitched, screeching static on full volume even when he tries to turn it low. It vibrates in his head and his bones and he thinks his ears might start bleeding and the windshield might shatter and rain glass on him.

So he just sits in the relative silence of the outdoors, parked in the middle of some unmarked road, not worried that some other car might come along because none had and somehow he knows that none will. It's a lonely road, calling to him, with faded yellow lines, and cracks that he's sure spell out the deep dark secrets of the universe, and potholes that may as well go all the way to the other side of the world. A road forgotten (just like him), and it stretches on without a bend for miles ahead and miles behind. Just a lonely road to nowhere lined with fields of wheat, their ends glowing gold as the sun sets behind them, and rippling in the wind like waves on the open ocean.

The Midwest? Certainly. Kansas? Possibly. It does sort of feel like home, or as close as anywhere ever had.

Thus is life on the road.

And with that thought he decides, for the hundredth time in these three days, that he should keep driving. But he settles into this resolution slowly, as he watches the sun sink behind the horizon, while the rest of the light fades and the world that was on fire turns blue. Melancholy blue but halcyon blue, and for real this time he is going to _move._ As striking as the view is, more stars than he can ever remember seeing, the moon bigger and brighter, one fact remains. This wide open road could take him anywhere, and that is exactly where he’s always been trying to go.

He reaches again for the key in the ignition, grips it tight, but that same, stubborn force still stops him from turning it. _What the hell is wrong with him?_ He’s spent the better part of his life driving around in this car, and yet now the thought of taking off leaves his hands shaking.

Looking up from the wheel he sees an intersection in the road ahead that hadn’t been there before. The scent of smoke and rust and blood fills the car and he's choking on it. He blinks and the crossroad is gone, forces a deep breath and the smell fades too. He's going crazy (maybe), or at least the possibility of it is growing more and more each second. He’d spent too many years looking for the bad things, chasing ghosts and seeing things that shouldn’t be there but always were. What a way to grow up that was really no way to grow up at all. But it's far too late to do anything about that now.

He gives his head a little shake which does little to clear it, but he sucks in a breath anyway, and holds it while he turns the key as quick as he can before he can back out again, and - 

The engine whines but it won't catch, so he tries again and still he’s getting nowhere.

_Goddamn it._

He releases the key, leans back and runs a hand through his hair. At least this explains why he’s been stalling here in some childish fit of paranoia. Except that it doesn't, not entirely (he just wants it to), because this is the first time he’s managed to actually turn the key since all this started, and he can't remember how he’d managed to get here in the first place.

He had been driving, and then he wasn’t.

It's a struggle to remember where he’d been headed, what case he’d been working. He recalls demons, but this doesn't seem like a trick they’d pull. Not that he knows what _this_ is, and it’s been a while since he’s dealt with a witch, so a curse seems unlikely. 

Maybe it was his dad that had been driving, and Sammy was in the back. But now he’s alone.

He doesn’t remember stopping, but he remembers sleeping, for a long time, because his head had felt like it was being wrung out, and his limbs had felt heavy, and his thoughts had been incoherent and all signs were actually pointing to _drunk_. If his dad had been driving then maybe. But he doesn't remember drinking, and it had been a long time since he’d gone so far as to black out, and besides, he’d come to behind the wheel. Never would he be so stupid as to drive in such a state. _But he hadn’t even been the one driving._

Anyway, a hangover of that magnitude would've had him out of commission for a full day, and _that_ he would remember. 

Maybe… Sam had been driving and their dad was in the backseat.

He throws a glance up to the rearview mirror, like he expects to see someone behind him, but he knows he's alone. For three days he’s been alone, and his phone is sitting on the passenger seat, completely dead. He knows without even checking that the others in the glove box fare just the same.

He tries the key again. If he is going to solve this mystery he’s going to have to move.

 _C’mon, baby_. But she isn't listening.

With a grunt he pushes himself up, pockets the keys and steps out into the night air. A stalled engine means something is wrong with the carburetor (probably), and provided it doesn't need to be replaced entirely (unlikely), he would absolutely be able to fix it. 

The five seconds it takes for him to walk around back to the trunk cheers him up considerably. While he prefers his baby to remain in perfect working condition, he can't deny that he loves any chance to get his hands dirty and fix her up. She always comes out even better than before.

He digs his bag of tools out from in between shotguns and rock salt and bottles of holy water and tries to not dwell on the fact that not a single thing is missing, because if everything is in the trunk, his dad and Sam have nothing. But there’s nothing he can do about that now. He has work to do before he can find them, and he's wading through flashbacks from a year ago. Is his whole life going to be spent chasing after his family when they run away and leave him in the dust without a word?

But he _isn't_ going to dwell. He has work to do and it's a perfect night for it, actually, warm but with a breeze to keep him cool, stars oddly bright enough that he won't struggle to see with only a flashlight. Strange that a faulty carburetor had pulled him out of the funk, but here he is, kind of wishing he had a nice cold beer to drink while he worked, and what do you know? A couple of bottles are mixed in amongst the mess of holy water. Warm, but still more than welcome.

He slings the bag of tools over his shoulder, pops the top off his beer, and starts to head around to the front, but as soon as he’s made it not one step around the passenger side there’s a crash. The bottle slips through his fingers and shatters on the concrete, but the noise is lost beneath the sound of breaks screaming, metal crunching, and paint scraping. Loud and fast and the car hops a foot to the left like it’s been hit but there’s nothing there. 

There’s a dent in the Impala that hadn’t been there a second ago. Not just a dent, but a fucking _crater_ , warping the car impossibly out of shape, becoming more and more twisted as he stares, watching it curl in on itself. Thank god he hadn’t been inside it, because there’s no way anyone could have survived that crash.

And yet, he didn’t see anything hit it, and nothing is there now, but unlike the crossroad and the nauseating smells, the damage to his car won’t go away when he blinks, no matter how much he wishes it gone. Even when he finally tears his eyes away to try to look for what might have caused it, he glances back and nothing has changed. It's just him in the night. Just him and his wreck of a car, but then - 

“I’m sorry."

A jolt runs through him when he hears the voice, low and rough and rolling like thunder.

“ _Motherfucker_.”

His heart leaps into his throat and his breath catches and this time the bag slips from his shoulder and clatters to the street. He spins around to find a man in a trench coat standing not five feet from him, in a space unoccupied when he looked just a moment ago. 

Dean stumbles a step back before catching his balance. Enough surprises for one night; he desperately wants back that mind numbing peace of sitting alone in his car watching the sun and counting the days, no invisible collisions and mysterious strangers.

“I’m sorry,” the man says again, standing there awkwardly, like he isn't sure how standing works, staring at Dean without blinking from beneath a mess of dark hair. With piercing blue eyes that shine like there's a light on inside of them. Dean was wrong about the sky: this is the bluest blue he's ever seen.

Somehow the man himself seems to glow, from some hidden source of energy, like there’s a spotlight on him, even though they’re standing on some deserted road in the middle of nowhere, no streetlight to be seen. 

When Dean finally finds his voice again, he croaks out, “Did you do this?” and gestures weakly at his car.

“I don’t think so.”

And before Dean can drum up any sort of response to that, there is a  _whooshing_  sound and a push of air over him and the man is gone.

Just like that he is alone again and he realizes just how _much_ , thanks to the brief and curious appearance of someone else. Maybe he made him up just to fill some sort of void, and yeah, Dean is definitely going crazy, but at least he knows he is, which leaves him one step ahead. He’s spent too many years seeing things that shouldn’t be there but always are for this to really rattle him.

 _Get it together, Winchester_ , he tells himself.

For now there isn’t much he can do. In fact, there is only exactly _one_ thing he can do, so he might as well get to it. 

He retrieves the bag of tools from the street and turns back to the wreck that is the Impala. He would let himself get lost in the work and think of nothing else. And he certainly has his work cut out for him, but he has never been one to back down from a challenge.

 

/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\

 

For one so accustomed to the supernatural, to general weird shit, and to being the bearer of bad news, it takes Dean much longer than he's proud of to realize he’s dead.

He supposes, because he doesn't feel particularly tortured, that he isn't in hell, although that would have to make this heaven, and because he'd previously believed heaven to be some craftily spun bullshit to keep the masses in line, he can't quite wrap his head around it. That and he’d long suspected he'd already had a reserved basement suite. But besides the mysterious Blue Eyes (who is anything but menacing), he hasn't seen a soul.

Demons have black eyes, and while he has no idea what could have eyes that ridiculously blue, it can’t be human.

All night he works on his car, too aware of his own movements and refusing to look over his shoulder in case he might see Blue Eyes there again. Because it feels like he's being watched, though likely it’s just paranoia (again, still, whatever). Strange things can happen in the dark especially when he can’t stop thinking about them, and they’re all starting to add up. Math has never been one of his strong suits but this much he can do.

He’s not stupid, he's just dead.

It really starts to hit him sometime between reshaping the passenger door with nothing but a hammer and his boots and magically finding spare parts in the field. He isn’t sure why he decides to wander the field, which isn't wheat anymore but tall, wild grass, and for whatever reason he doesn't question it. And there they are, glinting in the sunlight, a shiny new spark plug and side mirror that catches a flash of deep blue from the sky. He gets a funny feeling in his gut when he picks them up but doesn't question this either because he needs them. Then when he walks back out of the grass and into the street he nearly falls over, winded and blinded because he isn't seeing the Impala and the street and the fields in the daylight but a semi truck blaring out of the dark of night, straight for him. That is the truck that killed him, with a demon behind the wheel, only in his hallucination there is no driver. No demons in heaven, even imagined, and that thought is the only thing that staves off a panic attack. 

But he's fucking _dead,_ and goddamn it, it's too soon.

So he drops the spare parts in the grass and kicks the door back in, and this of course is when Blue Eyes pops up, like he's drawn again to the noise and destruction like a moth to a light. Dean ignores him until the door is in worse shape than before he'd fixed it then rounds on Blue Eyes where he stands a little too close for comfort.

“I’m sorry,” Blue Eyes says  _again_ , because that must be all he can say.

“Yeah?” Dean grumbles. "Well me too.” And he shoves past him and back over to where the parts lay in the grass and lifts the mirror and chucks it at the man’s head, but he poofs away before it makes contact. Which is rude, he has to stop doing that.

Dean then proceeds to spend the rest of the day beating the shit out of his already piece of shit car and then spends the night wallowing in the infinite sadness that has become his life.

 _No_ , _his death_. 

Actually the wallowing gets old after a couple of hours because he isn't some hopeless teenage girl, but he can't sleep and really has nothing better to do so why the hell not.

Only he does have something better to do. When light breaks again he forces himself up and winces when he sees the Impala, regretting his childish fit, because it’ll set him back at least another day. 

After that the work becomes somewhat therapeutic and the more he focuses and the less he thinks the more of his memories come back to him. At first it's just the truck and the crash and the fact that he _died_ , but then it's the hospital, and Sam, and his dad, and Tessa, and the fucking yellow-eyed demon, though he’s not clear on why. And for some goddamn unknown reason (though probably because his head _obviously_ got hit a lot too hard and he hadn’t been thinking clearly), Dean decided to listen to Tessa and walk into the light.  _Let it go, Dean,_ she’d whispered.

For the life (death) of him, he couldn’t say why he listened. 

While he works, the four of them parade around him and Dean steadfastly ignores them. Sometimes it’s  _five_  of them, whenever Blue Eyes decides to make an appearance, but he too is ignored even though he is actually really there. He doesn't try to speak anymore, because at any sound he makes, Dean throws whatever he’s holding at him and he disappears, so now he just stands silently and watches. 

Telling him to leave would mean acknowledging him and Dean doesn't quite want to do that, and there is some sick part of him that relishes the company (if it could be called that), because he's dead, and this might be the closest he’s going to get. He never really liked solo hunts, because it's always better if someone's there to watch his back, or laugh at his jokes, or to just fill the void of the empty seat beside him.

And in about a week there is an actual seat for him to (hypothetically) fill. One week is a really decent amount of time for him to manage to get the Impala running again, although one week is really more like two since he worked round the clock, such things like _sleeping_ and _fatigue_ not really the issue here like down on the ground.

Time itself isn't really an issue either, and while he could count what he assumes are days it doesn't quite feel like that long, but who the hell knows for sure. He figures he’s been dead nearly two weeks, and that's two weeks that his dad and Sam have been without him, and good god he just wants to know if they’re okay.

All he can do for now is rebuild, and anytime he runs into anything he can't fix he takes a break until a solution that would never work in the real world presents itself. Or, he walks into the ever-changing field to find a new part. It feels like cheating but he decides he doesn't care, because caring wouldn’t get him anywhere.

As soon as the car is returned to the shape of an actual car he starts digging around under the hood, fine tuning to get it running again. A mess of interconnected parts with broken bonds all covered in grease. The metal keeps catching the sun and the blue, blue sky, flashing in his eyes and leaving afterimages of things he hasn’t seen in a long time, and some things he knows he’s never seen.

He sees his dad handing him the key to the Impala for the first time, he sees a fifteen year old Sam smiling at him over a library book, his dad teaching him how to shoot a gun, Sam graduating from high school.

He sees flashes of himself and Sam working cases he can’t remember. Something about them having a half-brother that he doesn't understand. He sees some kid he’s never met but somehow knows is named Ben. These things make him smile just as much as the ones he does remember, but he can’t say why.

The time comes when there are so many spots blocking his vision he knocks over some tools and as they clatter and ding, leaving his ears ringing a little too loudly, he hears more than sees his mom singing to him, when he was barely old enough to walk. He can feel her kiss his forehead, but he can't see her face. He wishes he could see her face, but he _remembers_ this night, and his eyes were closed, half asleep. 

 _Angels are watching over you_ , she whispers, and then it's over. 

He has to sit down after that one because it’s a little too real and he can still feel her lips on his forehead and her breath on his ear. He sits on the pavement, leaning back against the side door of the Impala and he waits. He stares directly into the sun, effectively blinding himself but he can't see her walking back out of the light. He throws tools and bangs them together but all he gets is more ringing in his ears. No more singing, no more comforting words. He just wants to bring her back, and thinks he should be able to. What else is heaven good for?

There has to be a way, but the longer he stares the more his eyes hurt, and the ringing in his ears gets sharper, is joined by buzzing and something that sounds kind of like helicopter blades but on a much larger scale, and rocks tumbling down a mountain or buildings crumbling, and he should have known better. He was never meant to have the good things. Fly too close to the sun and… well, he’d walked into the light and this is all it got him.

He shuts his eyes and everything is white, too fucking white, and then it fades to blue and stays there. The blue of calm waves in the ocean, the ebb and flow of tides and the there’s no horizon because it just blends right into the sky, blue mists swirling into oblivion. Then the ringing in his ears softens, turns to static, white noise, and then it’s almost lost to the sound of the water, almost, and he can hear something like whispered words in the mix, but it's no language he’s ever heard. Too deep and too foreign to be his mother’s voice, but it's soothing nonetheless. 

When he comes out of it he can still see the ocean way down at the end of the road, and even thinks he can smell it. Maybe he would drive out there, when the car is finished. He stands up to get back to it, and there’s Blue Eyes, standing as uncomfortably as ever on the other side of the car. Dean glares as Blue Eyes reaches out and hands him back his wrench, which he takes begrudgingly, and when he opens his mouth to speak, Dean stops him.

“I swear to god if you try to apologize again I will beat you with this.” And he waves the wrench at him. 

Blue Eyes stands there conflicted and they both know full well that Dean wouldn't be able to touch him, but he remains silent and Dean just stares him down trying to look intimidating when really he’s just comparing the blue of his eyes to the blue of the ocean, and while the color is the same, the ocean has nothing on seeing those eyes up close. But he’s definitely looking too long and he can feel that his face has relaxed out of its glare and he isn't sure how to remedy this situation, so he does what he does best. Ignores it, and gets back to work.

By the time he’s managed to fix the carburetor, the first thing he'd set out to fix that ended up being last on his list, he’s forgotten all about Blue Eyes, who no doubt is long gone by now. The car is working. He hasn't tested it, but he knows, he can feel it. All that's left is to do something about all the scratches and exposed metal, but the sun has almost finished setting, and painting a black car in the dark doesn't seem like it would work out too well. Except, this isn't the real world, so he takes a walk through what is now a cornfield, and comes out with a bucket of paint and a set of brushes. 

He paints in the dark (because it’s not _too_  dark), the wet paint catching the light from the moon and the stars and it's good enough for him. It also catches reflection of things that aren't there that play like movie trailers, hinting but not telling. The first time he sees Sam’s reflection he spins around to look for him but of course he’s alone. He turns back, expecting it to just be in his head, but there Sam is, talking to some woman, presumably on a case, but it was no case that Dean ever worked. And Sam’s hair is longer than it was when he last saw him and he has stitches across his cheek and a bruise on his forehead, and there's no question that this is _after_ the crash, and it _makes no sense_. He sees his dad walk into frame and put a hand on Sam’s shoulder, looking just as banged up, and then they both turn away.

“Sam?"

But they're walking away and the reflection is fading and Dean didn't even get to hear what they were saying, where they were going.

“Sam!"

But they're already gone, and Dean knows they couldn't hear him anyway.

“ _Goddamn it_.” 

What is this bullshit that they didn’t even look broken up that he's gone? He should be with them, not up here wasting time when they have so much to do, when they'd gotten so close to catching the demon that killed their mom, and now there is  _nothing he can do_. Is there?

He supposes not, and they must not even need him (want him) or they’d have gotten him back. There had to be a way to get him back but they didn’t even try, because they didn’t need him, the fact that he went with Tessa and willingly died on them just proves that.   

Now he is dead and alone where he can't get in anyone’s way. 

“I’m sorry."

“ _Fuck off_!"

He keeps painting for the rest of the night, watching whatever images reveal themselves and while it's great to see them and know they are okay he still feels a stab of longing every time, and guilt and anger and whatever else. He pushes it down and tries to smile, and by the time the sun starts peeking over the horizon he's done and the paint is dry so he climbs into the driver’s seat.

He has excitement running though him, extra warmth pumping through his veins as he takes the key from his pocket and slips it into the ignition. He holds his breath as he turns the key like he's afraid the car still won't start (and most of him actually thinks it won’t) but then the engine roars to life and he can feel it vibrating in his seat, _finally_. 

He lets out a _whoop_ of joy and punches the air and for a second thinks he is going to start tearing up, because he didn’t even know how much seeing his baby all beat up had hurt him until she was purring again. His hands are shaking like before but for entirely different reasons. 

So he rolls down the windows, shifts into drive and eases his foot down on the gas pedal. 

Maybe he is dead but he's starting to feel like he's living again, ever on the move instead of sitting in the same damn place and _waiting_ for something to happen. Just feels damn good to be doing something, even if that something, in the grand scheme of things, is nothing. Nothing but driving down some road in disrepair, no signs, no lights, no off-shooting streets or towns, but that's just fine. He has the wind spilling in through the open windows and his favorite songs on the radio and that is enough.

Maybe he’d take a drive down to that ocean (he can’t see it anymore, but it's out there somewhere), spend the afternoon swimming in the blue before moving on, but he would keep moving, always. Death will not be enough to stop him.

 

/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\

_Memory_ _Lane_. 

That’s what Dean decides to call it. This stupid fucking endless road that he can’t - and maybe doesn’t want to - leave. 

But just short of neon lights flashing _YOU ARE HERE_ , it's pretty obvious that he’s driving through some sort of (out of order) timeline of his life that somehow manages to be disorienting and comforting at the same time. Because there’s that weird thing about memories, it’s nice to let the nostalgia creep in sometimes, but life is about moving forward. Everything changes, always, and he feels like he’s jumped ship, a little bit, now that he’s moving backwards (because there is no more forwards).

Well, there is _physically_ forwards. He keeps driving, always driving, and that’s okay. Familiar in the sort of way that he doesn’t feel like he’s stuck in one place, or in the past, because the wheels keep turning and turning while he’s driving through some sort of weirdo memory museum. 

And he blatantly ignores the expressway style sign that hangs over the road, green with white letters spelling out _Memory Lane_ , with arrows pointed straight ahead, because he knows it’s just his head fucking with him.

It’s like nothing he’s ever seen before, but _everything_  he’s ever seen all at the same time. 

He and Sam and their dad drove through this town once, some small, middle-of-nowhere, bumfuck town in Nebraska that had this rundown, hole in the wall ice cream shop with the best chocolate ice cream he’s ever had the pleasure of tasting. And there it is, in the distance, all alone, not in a line of shops like he remembers, but standing there in the middle of a field, just far enough away that he can't read the sign but he could still recognize it. He knows it’s that same shop and he remembers running out of there with Sammy trailing behind, Superman flavored ice cream all over his face cause he was still just a little kid, and hadn’t quite mastered that oh-so-difficult skill of eating gracefully.

Some road trip moments were really spectacular. Ones like this that stand out in his memory, too few and far between all the monsters and ghosts, but some of them, they were really worth it. 

It hadn’t been even a year later when they drove through Kentucky, something about a shifter that was terrorizing some town he never caught the name of. They drove past some amusement park when they were headed out, problem solved, and it was something like a real life Jurassic Park, but frozen in time. Just these giant dinosaur sculptures littered around and it took some convincing to get his dad to stop and let them have that afternoon, always the one-track mind, but he let them, and god did they have fun. Dean was at that age where he was too old and _too cool_  for it, but not old  _enough_ to just man up and admit the fact that yeah, it was actually freaking _awesome_ , so he couldn’t fully enjoy it. But he remembers Sam running around like he’d found the fucking holy grail or something, and that made up for it. 

And he sees these dinosaurs as he drives though what apparently is a jungle, which doesn't exactly scream _Kentucky_ , but seems a little more of an appropriate setting for dinosaurs, more lifelike that he remembers them being, but he supposes he was all dead set on them being _fake_ to fully appreciate them the first time around. Or, possibly, he’s just exaggerating now. He had the radio off but as he passes the first sculpture, a T-Rex, it turns itself on, and Dean can hear Sam’s laughter sprinkling though the static and his ten-year-old voice naming and supplying facts and trivia for each species he passes. 

And he even replies to the Sammy radio voice, word for word that conversation they had over ten years ago.

_"Birds are descended from dinosaurs you know, pretty cool isn’t it??!!!!"_

“So what you’re trying to tell me is that dinosaurs aren’t really extinct then."

 _“That’s not how it_ **works** _, Dean."_

And so it goes. 

He almost ( _almost_ ) ends up (crying) laughing, but then right when it’s all to much the scene starts to shift, and he’s back to nowhere again, with a more general road trip nostalgia of years and _fucking years_  on the road. He can’t even imagine what it would be like to wake up in the same bed for more than a few weeks at a time, and not in some skeevy motel. What it would feel like to sit down to a family meal in some suburban home, and not some diner or fast food joint. Maybe he had four years of that, but how many memories really stick from such a young age? There’s a few kicking around, sure, and he can hear them knocking but it’s nothing to root his life in. Barely feels like his life though it certainly feels like him, a little too much when he starts seeing those memories on the side of the road.

He’s three years old and digging for worms in the backyard, only it’s just the yard and no house, while his mom sits on a picnic blanket next to some of the best homemade peach pie he’s ever eaten. He doesn’t even like to eat peach pie anymore if he can help it (but he _will_ , if it’s the only option) because nothing can quite live up to that memory, even if it’s just something he built up impossibly in his head. But she’s there, sitting under the same tree she picked the peaches from, and smiling at him as he digs but doesn’t actually find anything. They’re too far away for Dean to make out her features, it’s just the shape of Mary, with glowing gold hair and a white dress.

Then his mom and his three year old self are gone but he’s still driving though what looks like his backyard, but endless. And he drives through it for a few days and lets this all wash over him because there’s this little part of him that never left that three year old behind. That still thinks that everything is going to work out in the end and get back on track, and he’ll wake up from the nightmare that was hunting monsters. He loved hunting, he did, and there was something about that apple pie life that made him uneasy, and while if anyone had asked he’d have told them it was because he didn’t understand the appeal, it was really because he’d known he’d never get to have it, whether or not he decided he wanted it (so he never even tried to make that decision).

Turns out he was right. 

What is _real_  is relative, he supposes, and if this is all he can get, he’ll take it. 

He’s thinking white picket fences and manicured lawns and he knows he would never fit into that box. And even though he’s been all over and seen so few towns that fit that bill it still somehow remains the clichéd epitome of America. But why (and at what cost)? He likes the road, he likes the variety or maybe it’s just that he really hasn’t known anything else. He’s thinking he wouldn’t have liked it much anyway, but maybe it would have benefited Sam. Sammy, who not only openly hated the nomadic lifestyle but actively rebelled against it, but it was never that typical rebellious teen crap, it was for the sake of some normalcy and stability (that poor kid). Dean did his best (he did) to try to give him what he could, but he still had to live off greasy diner food and stale cereal, sharing a bed with his brother and starting a new school every month. It’s a wonder he got anywhere, but he still came out of it a genius, if a bit bitter. 

And as soon as he starts thinking about Sam and school he’s driving past Stanford (which he only recognizes because of the sign out front) and then starts the hall of fame tour of the (probably) three hundred schools he’d attended in his own time, spread out all over the godforsaken country, but now all lined up in a neat little row for him to pass. 

They popped up because he started _thinking_ about them, he knows that’s why, but now he can’t get them to go away despite trying to do just that. 

Now his drive is annoying bells and swarms of faceless ghost students streaming from the front doors, except he can see Sam in the mix, more solid than the rest, and at various ages, each school, but always that same glowing excitement. And that’s why he can’t get these hellholes to go away. Even if they’d never meant much to Dean, Sam had always bounced through the halls and found something to love.

And who knows, Dean may have liked school if he could have ever finished a year out at a single place, but he never really saw the point when everything changes, constantly, and there was always always always another chance right around the corner. So what if he’d never decided to do anything with those chances. Life on the road was like a life without consequences. 

He’s here, then he’s there, and now he’s gone. 

And now everything’s gone and he’s back to driving through the middle of nowhere, and he’s not sure why it isn’t having its usual calming effect.

He’s fidgety and anxious and he tries calling the memories back, but seeing Sam just amounts to a reminder that he’s not really with him, and it makes him sad.

Heaven’s supposed to make him happy, right? There must be something wrong with him that he can’t even manage that. That he can’t accept the happy ending that’s been given to him.

There’s a shadow of Sam sitting in the seat next to him and he pretends it’s the real thing, but it takes almost too much suspension of disbelief, and when the light changes and he has to fight to keep him there. When he turns his head, tries to look directly at him, he’s gone. 

Everyone is gone. 

**/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\**

He drives one night on the endless road until he comes to a tunnel. For days, the landscape had been gradually becoming less flat, more varied, and he worried he was leaving this fake Midwest (or Kansas, if it ever really was). Maybe it doesn’t matter. 

The road has become more winding, just slightly, but he’s still moving forward, not in circles. At last it comes to a great big hill.

There’s a dark, dark foreboding tunnel through which he’d have to drive. It's still a ways ahead, growing ever so slowly as he speeds towards it, radio set to his favorite station, but it's losing signal, the farther he drives. He thinks nothing of it, other than a general annoyance at the static mingling with the melodies, no longer the station he set it to, but a three year old Sam singing some dumb kid’s song. _Can’t go over it, can’t go under it, oh no, we’ve got to go through it_! The volume keeps dwindling until it's muted altogether. Silence is okay too.

So he watches the tunnel as it looms up out of the darkness, the lights outside the entrance keep it lit, as a warning, or like a beacon, with nothing else for miles and miles. He knows he can't see anything through the tunnel (pitch black) but he does anyway, like images shifting through fog and lit by flickering candles. He sees cites and mountains and little roadside cafes filled with strangers who won't so much as look at each other. And then it's more abstract, fleeting faces, flashing lights through layers of fabric and dust being whipped through the wind. There's stars falling from the sky, or meteors crashing and lights flip on in little windows with faces pressed to the glass to watch the action. Silent suburban streets, waiting and watching like it's the second coming but there's no one there and the world is burning.

It's like years play out if front of him as he drives, and they’re really there, but mostly in his head because he can see the road just fine. The tunnel hasn't gotten any closer. Static is humming through the speakers again even though the radio is off and there's no wind coming through the windows even though they're down, and it's all a little eerie but honestly he's more accustomed to this than he is to normality. Doesn't matter where he is.

He finally gets the visions to calm down, just back down to regular old fog, slowly subsiding as he starts to noticeably close the distance, and that unexplainable ache from his first day returns to his arm.

He sees Blue Eyes standing at the entrance to the tunnel, which is now no more than just a tunnel, and he's just standing there in the middle of the road, so Dean eases his foot off the gas to slow down. But then he lets it fall back, heavy. He's tired of seeing him, offering nothing but useless apologies, something unsaid lurking beneath the words, so Dean keeps driving, deciding to let _him_ take the initiative and jump out of the way instead. Dean would be the one in control of this situation, because he's learning that he can do that here.

But Blue Eyes just stands there like he’s waiting to be hit, or maybe he has some sort of misplaced faith that Dean will stop, or god knows what. As Dean draws closer he can see him squinting in concentration, head tilted, and he can’t do it. Not that he thinks he could actually kill someone in heaven, but he’s going soft in his death, apparently. At the last second he slams the brake, comes to a stop inches from where Blue Eyes stands with his hands out and resting on the hood like it had been his plan all along to stop the car himself, with brute force. He seems so completely unfazed that Dean thinks for a second that maybe he really could have, but before he gives himself a chance to mull that over, he shoves out of the car and into the man’s space.

“Get your hands the hell off my car."

Blue Eyes lifts his hands and glances down at them, briefly, like he's surprised to see them there, attached to his arms, then catches Dean’s eye again.

“I’m sorry, but - "

“ _Stop_ with the - "

“ - you weren’t supposed to die."

Dean’s surprised he doesn't fall over, with how hard that hits him, coming straight out of left field. Just like that goddamn truck.

“I… what?"

His voice cracks and comes out too quiet but it's loud in his head, and he's surprised he doesn't fall to pieces and burst into dust and just blow away, or maybe melt into a puddle or – 

He doesn’t know who Blue Eyes is, that he can just stand there and make this grand statement, and Dean wouldn’t believe him if he didn’t feel the truth of it in his gut. Driving around for days thinking something didn’t seem right. He thought it was just that he was so _pissed_ that he was dead, but… he still can’t remember exactly what happened.

“You weren’t supposed to die."

“Then what the fuck am I doing here?" It still doesn't sound like his voice, more of a plea than anything he’s ever said.

“I don’t know."

He just really wants to hit something. He is confused, and dizzy, and can do nothing to stop his fists from clenching and he can't stand still, and he really, _really_ wants to hit something, but his only options are the Impala (no thanks), the stone wall of the tunnel (again, no), and Blue Eyes himself. Who for whatever reason looks just as distraught as Dean feels, and again Dean finds he can't hit him. Not with his car and not with his hands, so he hits the Impala instead, just not hard enough to hurt her, then leans onto her, head resting on his arms because it's too hard to hold himself up. He stays there for an eternity, and when he can finally move again he shifts just enough to turn his head where it rests to get a look at Blue Eyes, who of course is still there, watching and waiting.

“Who are you anyway?" Not his voice.

“Castiel. I am an angel of the Lord."

Dean can't help but laugh at that, just a very small laugh, before he remembers all of where he was, and why. He supposes it makes sense though. Angels in heaven.

"Are you my ' _guardian angel'_ or something?" A joke, but also genuine curiosity, so far out of his territory.

"No."

Dean has his eyes closed again, easier to focus on words if he doesn’t have to focus his eyes too, and while he isn't so sure he likes the words coming from either of them, he likes the voice he's hearing, drifting through the air like cigarette smoke. Warm and calming and addictive.

"No. So, what do you want from me then?"

"I don’t – ” he hesitates “ – _want_ anything from you, I just…” Castiel sighs, but it isn’t really a sigh, more like he’s physically decompressing and deflating and resettling himself and his bones in his skin, and even though Dean isn’t looking at him he can hear him shifting and creaking as he exhales, and his breath becomes the tinkering wind, still smelling like smoke, but cigarettes replaced with bonfires, and something sweet like marshmallows melting and… this isn’t the point. He can feel the heat too, and he must be imagining it, but he opens one eye to catch a glimpse of Blue Eyes (no, _Castiel_ ), glowing like the first time he saw him and staring up at the cloudless, starless sky like it holds every answer but is refusing to tell him. Or maybe that it holds none, but it should. 

And then when Castiel inhales, Dean swears he sees him shimmer or flicker and he can see right through him, but then he's looking into those blue eyes and yeah, he definitely imagined all of it, and again it's easier for him to close his eyes, just listen. 

“So, I should still be alive."

“Yes."

“You going to zap me back down then?"

“No."

“Great, thanks."

“You’re welcome."

This time he actually does laugh, first just a quick chuckle and then it rolls on down into his belly and it's a real, actual laugh and the first time he genuinely smiles since all of this started, and he can't believe the absurdity of this entire situation, anti-sarcasm, trench-coated angel, first and foremost. Still can't say why the hell he's around, but maybe it isn’t so bad. 

So he pushes himself off the car, feeling almost like himself again, and takes the couple of steps over to Castiel and claps him on the shoulder. 

“Thanks, man, I needed that."

Castiel just looks over and the hand on his shoulder with squinted eyes and otherwise doesn’t move, so Dean lets his hand drop down and steps away and moves on.

“Uhh, so if that’s it I’ll just keep driving then."

“No."

"Excuse me?"

"You can't go this way, you have to turn around."

"And why would I do that?" He's backing towards his car, back to feeling uneasy.

"Because there is nothing past here. It's not your heaven anymore, and they'll find you."

Apparently with good reason. He'll never catch a break it seems, but he's got his hands back on his car, fumbling with the key and the door handle because he's not really paying attention to what he's doing, with one eye still on Castiel.

“Look, I don't understand any of that, so -"

"The archangels are looking for you, because you're not supposed to be dead, and if you drive through this tunnel, they _will_ find you."

 _Goddamn it_. Is a little peace and quiet – and clarity on this subject – too much to ask for? Angels, archangels, _heaven_ , it’s too much, but -

"Sounds to me if I let them find me they'll put me back."

"Most likely, but I don't think it would be a good thing."

He has the door open and starts to climb in, but Castiel gets all up close and personal, blocking his way. "There's something they're not telling me," he says.

"Well there's a lot you're not telling me."

"Tell me you won't drive through this tunnel."

There’s something about the way he says it. Something about they way he could just force Dean not to drive, but doesn’t. Could trick him. Hell, Dean knows he _would_ stop him if he decides to go and do it anyway. There's something about the way he says it that leaves Dean wanting to reply -

"I won't."

"Please believe I am trying to help you. I wouldn't have come here if I didn't have a good reason. I'm sorry, Dean."

And he's gone.

 

/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\

 

Blue Eyes is a menace. A menace whose purpose is to confuse him and fuck with his head (as if he needs more of that), and for god knows what reason. Just as Dean is starting ( _starting_ ) to accept that he is in fact in heaven, this shit happens.

 _You weren’t supposed to die._  Isn’t that just the cherry on top of the sundae he never ordered. Fuck off.

Now, presuming Blue Eyes (wait, no, _Castiel_ ) is actually trying to help him, he should listen, turn the car around and flee in the opposite direction until, maybe, he meets the same predicament at the other end. Twin tunnels because no one can escape fate and that’s what this feels like. 

Although he knows that the road never ends. It doesn’t. It’s endless and he could keep driving literally forever, through the tunnel and beyond and that’s just oh so appealing. 

Screw Blue Eyes. Dean has zero reasons to trust him, and now that he's gone, and Dean’s not mesmerized by that blue, he sees no reason he should listen. Except for that nagging feeling that Castiel would pop back up and physically force him to stop. Ha. Dean kind of wants to see him try.

But then of course there’s that weird glow emanating from the tunnel. A weird glowing _darkness_ instead of light, which defies all logic, with an air of pompous foreboding.

He wants to drive through that tunnel just to spite Castiel, to piss him off, but as he turns the key and the engine roars back to life he hesitates. 

Because he can feel the tunnel, or whatever the hell is on the other side, calling to him, seeping out of the dark and twining into the recesses of his mind. But not in that sort of exciting, meant-to-be kind of way, but like a siren’s song luring him towards a trap, and he can’t help but listen to the eerily soothing melody, all while knowing it’ll mean the end of him. He wants it, god he wants it, and he knows it’s the wrong choice, even as his foot eases down on the gas. 

He can feel the pull, pulsing and matching the beating pain in his forearm, a vague sense of power, not at all unlike the one ring (shoot him, please, for the reference) and the darkness is sucking him forwards into a black hole.

He’s inching forwards, and though it remains the dead of night ahead of him he can see the sky brightening behind him in the rearview mirror, sun peeking up, and bright blue glowing around the edges of his vision and it strikes him that it can only be one of two reasons Castiel left him here alone, without supervision. Either he doesn’t actually care, or he believes in Dean enough to know that he’ll be okay on his own. 

So he latches onto that second reason, slams the brakes, and then with a steadying deep breath, makes a u-turn and punches it. 

It's almost immediate, the relief, as soon as he can't see the tunnel anymore, and the spell is broken, even though he's still so close. Out of sight, out of mind. If only everything could be so easy.

The ring cast into the fire, melting away until he’s wondering why he was ever so concerned in the first place. And the drive itself is peaceful, just like before he came to the stupid tunnel and it's all okay again. He drives.

He drives and he's really not sure for how long because even though the clock on the dash is flashing numbers they don't seem to be following any sort of logical pattern, entirely arbitrary and inconsistent. It doesn't matter. 

And Castiel doesn't come back.

It's not like Dean is looking for him (he _isn't,_ honest) but there's no sign of him anyway. 

So Dean keeps driving and it seems like days only it remains night, even though he thought he was turning around to morning, to a sunrise, it must have just been a trick of the light. He passes some vague memories, fireworks and bonfires that light the darkened fields from a little too far in the distance. He wishes they were closer, but he can’t concentrate, can't pull them forward. He keeps driving until he comes to a house.

Not just any house, he's seen this one before but it's been so long. Too long. Technically, he'd been there less than a year ago, but it wasn't the same. The devil is in the details. And of course as soon as he thinks that he hopes that the devil _isn't_ involved. God help him (not literally).

This is the house he grew up in. Kind of. If a mere four years could be called _growing up_. He doesn't think it actually counts, but as he pulls over and gazes up at the structure it's all he can think about. 

This is the house he grew up in. The only real house he’d ever known. The last place he saw his mom. The last time the four of them (hell, even the three of them) could really be called a family, even though they clung to the word, grasping at broken straws.

The last time his life _resembled_ normal. 

A lot of lasts and he’s not sure how he feels about that. 

His house but not his house, like so many things here, it is but it isn’t. It's all starting to give him a headache but he gets out of the car and starts walking through the grass to the front door anyway. 

But he can’t quite bring himself to open the door right away. He sits on the porch steps and gazes out at the street and ghost houses start forming along the block with ghost children running across lawns and climbing ghost trees. 

Dean was only four when he left. He really doesn’t remember what it was like living there, and he supposes that’s why the kids look like their running through a fog, trailing dust as they break apart and fade away. Why he can see through the brick and siding on the houses and into their rooms and straight through to the horizon. He knows what it was supposed to have been like, life in typical suburban neighborhoods, but he can’t _remember_.

It makes him dizzy. He closes his eyes.

He’s not sure how long he stays like that. Till the sounds he’s imagining fade away. Maybe an hour. And when he opens his eyes again he’s alone.

He doesn’t want to be so sentimental about a house that amounts to the physical embodiment of everything he’s not. Maybe he used to want this, when he was a kid, but then reality had kicked in and he grew the fuck up.

He goes into the house because he suddenly feels exposed. There’s too much air and to much open field and space that just goes on forever with so much (wasted) potential. He can’t deal with all the missed opportunities, so he runs away, into the confines of childhood dreams.

The house is nothing like the one he visited a year ago, to banish the poltergeist. When he saw his mother’s spirit. When she saved them. It’s nothing like that and exactly how he remembers it at four years old.

But memory can’t really be so crystal clear from such a young mind. The house feels bigger, it feels brighter, and every last thing is exact down to the details he knows that he can’t be remembering correctly. Even if there hadn’t been so much time between then and now, he’d probably still remember it wrong. It doesn’t matter. (Does it matter?)

He wanders, slowly, towards the scent of apple pie baking in the oven, the smell floating down the hall along with echoes of his mother’s tinkering laughter at his four year old self’s incessant questioning. _Is it done yet?_ He can hear a baby Sam lazily crying as his dad rocks him to sleep in a softly creaking crib.

He reaches the kitchen and it’s empty, save for the scent and the warm pie waiting for him on the counter top. 

He doesn’t eat it. He can’t. Because he’s read stories where eating food beneath someone’s roof is a peace offering, no harm can come once the bread is broken, and he’s read stories where it’s a trap. He doesn’t know which he wants this to be, and he doesn’t trust it (yet).

Because it’s warm and inviting in a way it has no right to be. His real _home_  is outside and parked on the endless road.

It’s just easier to be a cynic, because it makes disappointment less likely, less incapacitating.

The Impala has soft leather seats, worn perfectly to accommodate his body from years of use. But the house has beds.

And the not the questionably sanitary, uneven, squeaky motel mattresses he’s used to. But the kind with handmade quilts and freshly laundered pillow cases and little porcelain statues on the bedside table because _angels are watching over you_ (his mother always said).

If only she knew.

Maybe she knew.

She was the optimist, believing in angels when the rest of them didn’t. 

There has always been some sort of magical quality littered around his memories of her and maybe it isn't just something he built up in his head. 

He takes the stairs two at a time when he thinks he hears her singing above him.

His bedroom walls are blue. He honestly doesn’t remember what color they were, way back when, but blue feels right. Feels comfortable, feels inviting, like the chair in the corner where he sits to take it all in, suddenly too tired to keep himself upright. 

There are toys left out on the floor, and a picture book open on the dresser and his tiny toddler shoes poking out form under the bed. If only that was all that was under there. No monsters. But there’s always monsters (and skeletons to hide).

When he was a kid he didn’t fear the dark, he had no reason to. That came later.

A shadow of a three-year-old Dean is asleep in the bed while his mom is downstairs cooking breakfast and his dad sits at the table reading the paper. It’s all so… (domestic, peaceful, goddamn clichéd) he can’t believe it had ever been real. He’s not sure he’s got it right, even now. 

He wants to _see_ her. Not just chase her voice through empty rooms, only to have her vanish to the other side of the house. He’s seen his dad and Sam out on the road, in the Impala. But he can only hear his mother, so far away.

There’s a knock at the door and of course he finds it’s Castiel when he goes to investigate. It’s oddly polite of him to knock and Dean thinks he wouldn’t have minded if he’d just let himself it. Because even though there’s shadows and ghosts running through the rooms, he feels alone. Probably the only reason he answered the door anyway (such a weird thing to have happened in this place, someone knocking, so normal). Castiel is looking around at the structure of the doorframe, the cracking, painted wood, and then the staircase that’s farther back and over Dean’s shoulders, looking at the walls instead of at Dean.

“Is this your home?” he asks.

Dean opens his mouth to say _yes_ or possibly _no_ , but freezes when he realizes neither answer is correct, so he settles for a shrug and steps aside to let him in.

“It’s a lovely house,” Castiel says, as if he can get that impression from mere seconds inside a single room.

Dean shrugs again; he has mixed feelings. On the other side of the couch, in the other room and just out of sight, there’s a memory of himself playing with plastic toy cars while baby Sam rolls around and giggles next to him. It’s all good and heartwarming until he closes his eyes for a second too long, then it’s all fire and fear and regret. He’s not sure how many good memories it’ll take to make up for the worst of his life, but he’ll let them duke it out on their own, while he waits patiently for the verdict.

Castiel sees the toys strewn about, the décor that’s clearly leftover from the 70s and 80s and not the present day, and asks, “Is this where – ”

“ _Castiel_.”

 _Where you grew up_. He doesn’t want to hear it.

Castiel’s eyes widen, he takes a step back, which is actually farther into the house. “I’m sorry. I should go.” And he’s gone.

Another pointless visit.

Alone again, in empty silence, and it looks like home but it doesn’t feel like it (not yet), but he thinks maybe he ought to give it a try. Because let’s face it, endless driving may be moving forward, but it’s also running away. He’s always known that, even if he doesn’t like to admit it, but he’s tired, and he’s already lost the war.

He’s dead.

And maybe this is the only equivalent of retirement that he was ever going to get.

This house is as good as any. With it's peeling wallpaper and the footprints in the carpet and the jacket thrown over the arm of the couch. All these details make it feel lived in in a way that it isn't (not really). The baby pictures and family portraits on the walls add to it too, and they’re much less alarming than the ghosts. But the eyes move with him as he crosses the room, watching him as he heads back up the stairs to his bedroom. Maybe it wouldn’t have been a bad thing if it didn’t feel accusatory. _How did you end up here?_  

He doesn’t have an answer. Will likely never have a satisfactory one.

So he looks away from the photos and up at the ceiling like he's trying to see the endless blue sky through it and whispers to himself or maybe the rafters or the empty room, " _Welcome home_."


	2. PART TWO

First on Dean's nonexistent to do list is a grand tour of the house. Sure, he did a quick run through when he first found it, but nothing of the _grand_  variety. Much of his time so far has been spent vaguely, without goals or intent, and lost in memories. It passes either much slower or much faster that he thinks it ought to, such as it goes up here. He uses terms like _hours, days, weeks_  extremely loosely and mostly for his own peace of mind even if he knows it’s incorrect; he needs that frame of reference.

As it is, he feels like he’s been _wasting_ time, as if because he’s dead the house is a mausoleum more than a home, so he plans a tour, in attempt to make the place more real to him. He decides that if he’s going to do it, he’s going to do it right, and it should take days, in several passes, delving further into the mystery each time.

Or, in layman’s terms, he’s just got a lot of time to kill and nothing actually worthwhile to do with it.

He starts outside. There’s the peach tree in the backyard that he would always climb to pluck ripe fruit from to pass down into his mother’s waiting hands, with John yelling from inside the house that _he’s going to fall one of these days, Mary, get him down from there,_ but she’d just wink up at Dean as she took the next peach. Dean was a good climber, and more importantly, they had pies to bake.

The backyard is also the site of a lake, which had not been not a feature of the real property in Lawrence, and honestly Dean couldn’t quite place why it's there. It does add to the countryside feel of the whole thing, very homey, a change of pace from four walls, a change of setting right at his fingertips. As he stares out at the water, rippling in some barely-there breeze, the slight sound of tiny waves hitting shore, air full of that lake scent, he thinks that if he had ever gotten any say in anything, he would have liked to have lived by a lake. Something about it just seems right.  

When he makes his way around to the front, there’s the Impala still parked out on the street, the endless road, _Memory Lane_ , now devoid of anything except the replica of his house behind him. His fingers twitch and he feels the key heavy in his pocket as he takes a step towards the car, and he’s just itching to get back out. The feeling is stronger now that the car is in his sight. And he never found that ocean. The lake is nice, but it’s familiar. That beach vacation has always slipped his grasp.

Then he hears chimes blowing in the wind where they hang on the porch, calling him inside with tinkering, unintelligible whispered words. 

He lets the sound drag him back. The Impala will still be there if he changes his mind. He has a lot time; it’s a concept he’s not yet used to.

The actual house is the part of the tour he’d been dreading. Even if that’s where he’s spent most of his time so far, he’d avoided exploring it in depth. It’s where the real memories lie, and the moment his foot sets down inside the doorway they come to life around him.

Dean lives with the ghost memories as he ventures through the house, so slowly, sometimes alone, sometimes with Castiel inexplicably peering over his shoulder. 

They talk once in a while, usually not about anything particular or important, because it’s easier. The details of the house are unfortunately distressing as they dredge up all these things that Dean thought he’d forgotten, that it was easier to have forgotten, and he can only handle one serious matter at a time.

Castiel, thankfully, doesn’t ask about the memories playing out behind them, around them, even though Dean can tell he wants to. Sometimes Dean will offer, but usually he doesn’t. If he had any real say in it, he’d keep the memories and Castiel separate, one or the other but never both at the same time. It’s confusing, to say the least, and he feels that the memories should be kept private, and Castiel… he hasn’t yet figured out where Castiel fits in to any of this.

He lets Castiel hang around just in case, or, at the very least because he’s carrying vital information, but Castiel won't tell him any more about Dean’s _situation_ , though Dean tries to trick it out of him a few times, between expeditions of the rooms, when he needs a break from the past and tries to shift focus to the present. 

 _So I’m not supposed to be dead, huh?_ Castiel never takes the bait, and instead makes with the poofing.

He avoids his room because no matter what he does it remains a kid’s room and because he can’t  _be_  a kid anymore (or, for that matter, never really was) it depresses him.

Sam’s room is safer and he spends a lot of time with baby ghost Sam sleeping in his crib. It makes Dean a hypocrite, apologizing for things that aren’t his fault (after being pissed at Castiel for doing the same), but he tells sleeping Sam that he’s sorry for all the shit that comes after this frozen moment. Better that he stays this way and doesn’t grow up.

Dean’s especially sorry for dragging him back into it all. He shouldn’t have. But Dean always has been bad at being alone. 

But that doesn’t stop him from shooing Castiel from where he’s watching in the doorway. Time and a place, and Castiel doesn’t seem good at knowing when or where. 

He starts spending more time at the lake in the backyard, first just as an escape from the memories, but soon makes a discovery one afternoon (morning?) after sitting on the dock for a few hours (minutes?) and he gets a glimpse of present day Sam wavering on the pretty blue surface of the water. Just like the reflections in the wet paint on the Impala so long ago, those in the water aren’t accompanied by sound. But he can tell Sam is on a case, _again_.

Dean wishes he could tell him to turn around and run away back to Stanford, to be happy and forget about all of it. Everything they did seems so much less important from this new vantage point, literally having spent his whole life chasing something he couldn’t find. Or, that he did find, but what did it accomplish?

Their mother wouldn’t have wanted any of this for them. He knows that, he’s always known that, and he’s pretty sure John knew it too, but they all went ahead and ignored it anyway, letting it consume them instead. This is where all those dreams of vengeance got him. 

This is why he can’t see her now, why he can’t face her, always keeping her just out of sight. 

Instead he digs through her house for clues and things to keep her close. He doesn’t trust anything that he doesn’t explicitly remember being there when he was a kid, his memory of that time oh-so hazy.

He goes through all the rooms and the closets and all the shelves and chests, finding seemingly infinite mementos and trinkets from his horribly brief childhood, toys he knew he never had but had wanted, photographs of _the good times_ plastered to walls and stuck in frames and haphazardly shoved between pages of books in place of bookmarks. 

He decides not to look at any of them too closely, because if he tries his eyes start clouding over and stinging and it isn't worth the catch in his breathing or the constricting in his chest. 

While running a finger along the spines of the books on the shelf, skimming titles, one catches his eye more than the rest.

 _Supernatural_  by Carver Edlund.

There aren’t any photographs protruding from it like so many of the others, and it’s so out of place amongst the classic literature and the dictionaries and the children’s books. It looks like some trashy crime novel, squeezed in at the far end of the middle shelf as an afterthought, beside a well-worn copy of the Holy Bible, and it hadn’t been there moments ago when he started browsing the collection.

He ignores it, but later when he makes a second round past the shelf, there are two of them.

He isn’t so sure what to make of them at first. He reads the first one and it’s just a case that he worked about a year before he died, when he showed up at Stanford to drag Sam away with him because their dad left him and he didn’t want to go looking for him on his own.

It’s _creepy_  reading about his life (in the third person), because there’s just a little too much detail in there for it to be entirely comfortable, but he resigns to think that they're just another form of the memories that play out at every turn.

More of the books keep appearing every time he passes the bookshelves.

Because there’s not much else to do, he keeps reading, and makes it through about six months worth of time, ten books, and really he should have seen it sooner, but it takes him that long to pinpoint just _how_ they're different form the memories.

They don't just contain the good times. Oh no, they contain every shitty thing he's ever done or endured and even quite a few that he was pretty sure he'd only ever thought, but there it all is, in print, ink and paper, _tangible_ , and staring him right in the face. No denying the pile of crap that was his unfortunate, short life.

 _Salt and burn_ , he thinks. Best and only way to get rid of ghosts, and that's all these books are.

He figures it's some sort of ridiculous, condemning file system that heaven devised somewhere along the line. The best of times play out in Technicolor, surround sound, in 3D jumping out at him and it's all fun and games, while the worst of times are jotted down for future reference, so he can't forget, or so they can reserve their right to double check the details and change their mind and throw him out. Sitting on the shelf threateningly, reminding him how lucky he is that they let him in in the first place, and placed strategically so he can easily find them, on the off chance he wants the reminder of all the details that somehow seeped through the cracks. Or the fucking chasms, because seriously, he’s not sure which suit decided the good outweighed the bad, because he can't say he agrees. Especially not after reading. Sure, he'd saved some lives but he'd left a hell of a trail of bodies doing it, and these books are here to mock him. 

The memories he can relive are plated in gold, they sparkle in the morning sun and make him feel all warm and fuzzy inside (before he remembers that he’s _dead_ ), while all the ones hidden away between the pages might as well have been written with blood from his own veins. Or blood from the veins of all those poor souls he didn't save. 

He really does want to burn them, so he goes for it. Only when he passes the shelf some days later they’re all back, looking a little worse for wear (surely the damage is just for show) and he knows there would be no use in trying to get rid of them again. Because ghosts haunt, it's their nature, and he probably does deserve this hanging over him for all eternity. Salt and burn wouldn't do the trick this time because he's the thing they're holding on to and he can't very well get rid of himself. He's already dead and gone.

So he does the only thing he can do. He keeps reading.

He keeps reading over the last year of his life until the final book ends with the crash.

That’s it. That’s how it ends, halfway through a sentence and then just a handful of blank pages and not that bullshit hopeful kind that can be filled with anything. It’s blank because it’s the end, and he’s dead. It's the kind of blank page that says, _oh, hey, sorry, but we’ve lost interest, so you’re s.o.l.._

Still, he thinks if they (and who are _they_ exactly, those archangels that Castiel speaks so low of?) went through all the trouble of making the books, attributing them to some (presumably fake) author, the least they could have done was give the series a less maddening end. Some closure, if you will. Or at the very least something that masquerades as closure, to the untrained eye, because _hello_ , this is not how his story is supposed to end, especially if he’s still around (kind of) to have an opinion on the matter.

He burns the books again, just because he can, part of him thinking that maybe they’ll stay gone this time, now that he’s read them, but it's just wishful thinking. 

They rise, like a motherfucking phoenix, from the ashes, and when he sees them back on the shelf he finds that they've multiplied. Twenty or so new books.

The madness, apparently, would never end.

At first he thinks these new books would be some relics form his childhood, _prequels_  or what have you, but the next one in line picks up from the aftermath of the crash. The hospital, and it's  _almost_  like he remembers it, except then it isn’t, not one fucking bit.

All he remembers is a brief talk with Tessa, of which he can recall no details, and then there was just blinding light and the smell of pie and fireworks, and, well, you know the rest. 

But that is not how it happens on the page. He lay in a coma, his spirit or whatever talked with Sam through a Ouija, and he tried to outrun Tessa while their dad made the dumbest damn deal of his life in the hospital basement, where the demon showed up to simultaneously save and further ruin the day.

Dad dies, Dean wakes up, and  - 

No. Hell _no_. He doesn’t know if this is some sort of sick joke or what but he is genuinely terrified of what might happen next, which is a monumental feat considering, so he shuts the book and burns them all again just to make himself feel better, and when they inevitably reappear, he stubbornly refuses to acknowledge them.

 

/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\

 

He sees the crash replaying everywhere he turns. In the reflections of the sunlight on the windows, on the glass coverings of picture frames. He sees it still when he shuts his eyes, brighter now than ever because the details had come flooding back to him thanks to the print.

He’s watching his death in the flickering flames in the fireplace that hadn’t been there before, until it starts to die and he throws more wood in to fuel it, copies of the books, because even if they won’t stay down they’re useful tinder. As the flames rise up he can feel it matched in a burring heat on his arm, too specific to be emanating from the fireplace but rather from inside him. He can almost see a red mark, like a scar, if he squints. He ignores it while he watches his life burn away, turn to ash and smoke and embers, while a shadow of Tessa lurks in the smokey orange shadows, ready and waiting to reap him.

She’s watching _him_ , not the scene in the fire, and it makes him shiver when he catches her eye, only for half a beat, and when he blinks, she’s gone, but it still feels like he’s being watched, if not by her, by some other misplaced memory.

He can’t stay in this house. He’s tried. He’s given it two weeks or maybe three or however long, he doesn’t know, but the effort was there.

There are two versions of the Impala calling to him. The one that killed him, and the one out on the street that could get him out of here - and he chooses that one.

Between phantom crashes that make him jump and the memories drowning him in a nostalgia for a life he never really had (only in his head, for a while, when he let it in) the house doesn’t feel like home, just an uncontrollable projection of fantasies from his subconscious.

From the beginning he should have stayed in the Impala and just kept driving, forever and always on the endless road, because that’s what he does best. There are so many places on the road, that he rushed past in favor of a single one, and he thinks he only let it happen because he let Castiel’s words rattle him. He shouldn’t have. That isn’t like him.

The moment he starts the engine, his temper starts to ease, rolls off him in waves as he pulls away from the curb.

The house is solitary on the street, but soon it becomes small and insignificant in the rearview mirror, and Memory Lane starts forming around him again, like he knew it would.

There’s a motel from Colorado that he and Sam spent a whole summer at alone, messing around and reveling in freedom, and where he met - well, he decides to let that one pass quickly.

He sees the creaky old house, home to a hard-of-hearing elderly lady, where he successfully took down his first vengeful spirit, all on his own.

He sees a vaguely familiar bar up the street, _the Roadhouse_ , according to the sign. He’s pretty sure the last time he was there he wasn’t even old enough to drink, just out of high school maybe, but he thinks he remembers doing so anyway, in secret. John dragged him and Sam in there and told them to stay put, keep quiet (but they did neither), while he huddled up in the corner with a contact for whatever job they were on.

The Roadhouse is the first landmark (besides the Lawrence property) that demands an actual visit, mostly because, well, it’s a bar, and he could use a drink.

There’s no street leading up to it, or real parking lot, so he pulls to the curb and walks over, through tall grass.

When he found the Lawrence house he had no doubt that it was a real, physical, tangible building. There was no reason to doubt it, but now he lifts his hand slowly, because he half expects it to go right through the wood of the door.

Some memories have been solid but many are ghosts, shadows, ever elusive.

His fingers graze wood and he breathes a sigh of relief as the door swings open.

Ghosts of John and some faceless hunter and some woman Dean doesn’t know by name but thinks he’s seen before are crowded at a table in the far corner, deep in silent conversation in an otherwise empty bar. Little kid Sam and Dean are left to fend with a rambunctious teenage girl, running around in a tank top and short shorts, blonde hair waving, acting simultaneously like a little kid and far too old for her age. She’s pushing a broom around because her mother, the woman in the corner, had told her to make herself useful, but it’s pointless: Sam’s made a game of kicking her already half-assed piles into nonexistence, while Dean sits on a barstool and laughs.

He might be making some of this up, even as it plays around him it’s coming back to him slowly, full of holes, and he can only remember it once he sees it first.

Real life (dead) Dean sits down on the barstool next to his former self, where there’s already three fingers of whiskey waiting for him on the counter.

Before long, Sam gets bored and wanders out front, and Jo – right, that was her name -  and Dean sneak out back with some booze.

Jo makes a show of what would happen if her mother caught them, “ _Blah, blah, blah, I’ll lose my liquor license, blah_ whatever,” accompanied by a huge eye roll, and they both laugh. Jo was a self-proclaimed rebel and the Winchesters have always existed a little bit outside the law anyway.

Dean watches them go and downs the rest of his whiskey while the memory fades and he’s left alone at the bar.

He can’t seem to bring any other memories forward, maybe that was the only time he’d been there. The bar is devoid of guests, which must be exactly why John chose to meet the hunters there. As a general rule, however, Dean prefers a little more life (which he now perpetually lacks).

He drinks a second whiskey, then a third when he realizes the alcohol has absolutely no effect on him in heaven, except for a pulsing in his forearm, like the not-really-there, faded scar has claimed possession of the poison. Whatever. He grudgingly trudges back out to the Impala.

A failed attempt, and now he has nowhere to go.

He thinks he might as well just repeat his first few days here, stare bleary-eyed into he sunset and turn his brain off because it’s so much easier, but right when he’s about to drift into nothing (with the mindset of _alright, I’m going to die here - what have I got to lose_ ) when he sees a glint of something on the horizon. Something bright and white and hot.

It’s off the beaten path, far to his right, not down the road but out in the field of weeds and wildflowers. It shines again, like a watch catching the light for a brief moment, while the wrist it’s choking turns. There and gone. There and gone and he thinks maybe it’s Morse code and regrets never having learned it. John had tried to shove it down his throat but dots and dashes couldn’t hold his interest.

After a moment or two it fades, and he tries to shut his mind off again, and right when he’s back to _yeah, dying here_ , the glare starts its incessant flashing again. He doesn’t know what it’s saying, but it feels like it’s shouting at him.

_What the fuck, are you just giving up? What kind of asshole just rolls over in the mud when shit gets tough? You’re better than this._

(He is, but he isn’t.)

Or, it’s saying something along those lines.

At any rate he knows it’s mocking him, and if for no other reason than refusing to let it be right, he shifts into gear.

He’s spent plenty of his time here pissed off and bitter but he’s never _really_ tried to fix it, just followed the road because it was there and it seemed like a thing to do. John had long ago stomped into him an instinct to follow orders, and another thing - he was not raised to be a quitter.

No, he was raised to blindly and boldly blunder forward against the odds, with an off-base confidence, which certainly isn’t _better_ , but had a tendency to work out somehow.

He punches the gas and swerves off the road and onto the field, forging a path through the flowers and weeds, as usual destroying the beauty of the world while working his mad quest. He’s making a beeline for the flashing light, ready to punch the living daylights out of whoever or whatever is behind it while he figures out what to do next.

But he only makes it about fifty feet before everything starts shifting and he feels some sort of motion sickness bubbling up inside of him while the world tilts, and then the road is reforming under his tires and the glinting picks up again somewhere to his right, far out in a field of yellow and dying grass and littered with scattered, leafless trees.

 _Can’t catch me, fucker_ , it says.

“We’ll see about that,” Dean grumbles, but he just keeps on driving in defeat, maybe another half a mile forward on this newly formed (identical) endless road.

The light keeps flashing, matching the beat of the pulsing in his arm, worse now, growing like a hangover, just not in his head, and with each turn of the tires the light is brighter and the ache is deeper so he slams on the breaks and lets the car jerk to a stop.

“ _Fuck_.”

The road is emptier than it’s been since he got here and he can’t make anything appear. He stares out at the emptiness, trying his best (and failing) to shut out the light and the ache, until his eyes glaze over and the only change is the one thing that always makes _itself_ appear, standing right in front of him and staring straight at him through the windshield. 

 _Castiel_.

Dean leans back in his seat, arms crossed, and stares right back with a challenging glare, saying nothing, for what must be several minutes until Castiel breaks eye contact and walks around to slide into the passenger seat.

“Did you see it?” he asks.

“No.” He looks straight ahead.

“Dean - ”

“ _No_. It’s nothing.” And what was it really? _Nothing_.

“I think - ”

“Shut up or get out of my car.”

He mumbles something that sounds like _archangels_ and _I told you so_ , but Dean is probably imagining that second one, at least, but then he does fall silent.

The light is gone now, has been from about the time Castiel showed up. Maybe it’s a coincidence, maybe it isn’t. Doesn’t matter.

The ache is fading too, still there, but it’s the kind of ache he can ignore and forget about completely, the sort he’s dealt with his whole life. He’s used to scrapes and cuts and bruises and scars, except that he’s used to them being physical things he could quantify, and he can’t seem to ever see this one, only on rare occasion from the corner of his eye when he’s not really looking. Mind over matter doesn’t work in cases where the issue may or may not be entirely psychological to begin with. That gives it an unfair advantage.

Castiel clears his throat.

“ _What_?”

“Are you going to keep driving?”

He laughs in spite of himself. “You hitchhiking, Cas?”

“I don’t -” a little smile starts in the corner of his mouth and then he shuts it down. “I suppose I am.”

Dean can still see the smile in his eyes, sparkling blue.

“Alright, where to?”

“Am I supposed to choose?”

“Generally how it works. Gotta choose somewhere to get out.” Safety net.

Castiel just shrugs.

“Fine.”

Dean drives, focusing on the road and the wheel in his hands and the leather seats humming and the tires kicking up tiny pieces of gravel from the beaten street. Castiel sits silent, rapt attention out the window and on nothing _,_ only then when Dean looks again it’s not nothing.

They’re in some tiny town in Minnesota and it’s snowing. Generally, as an adult Dean avoided the states where it snows during winter, kept south as much as possible, but John didn’t care. He went where the headlines took him. But they’d spent a weekend here, when Dean was fourteen or so, and he and Sam invited themselves to a huge snowball fight with the local kids.

It spanned blocks and blocks, and he can see them all now, dark shadowy ghosts against the stark white background, snowballs flying left and right. It’s much grander than when it actually happened, and it does that liberated feeling so much justice.

It’s still relatively warm inside the car, but their breath comes out in a fog and a snowball crashes onto the windshield, and like that the ice between them is broken.

From there on out, it’s all innocent banter and lighthearted jokes ( _snow angels,_ _Cas, it’s hilarious_ ) as they drive through the Minnesota snowstorm and then as the snow melts and they travel south, Iowa maybe, if they’re to be literal, but who really knows.

It’s almost like he’s driving with Sam in the passenger seat. It’s easy, it’s comfortable, the conversation flows more freely now than it had before, and he’s done this a thousand times, trekking cross country and needing to fill the silent miles with something. Only it’s never been Cas before. And in these circumstances - he’s an angel, he has wings and somewhere else to be most of the time; Dean doesn’t know where he came from or why he’s still here.

But he’s _glad_ he’s here, though he doesn’t know where that came from either. Something’s looking up and he’s holding on to the hope that if he just keeps driving he’ll wake up. He’ll turn a corner and be back on earth. Sam will be taking a nap, curled uncomfortably in the backseat.

There’s a motel on the side of the road, neon sign flashing vacancy. Dean keeps driving. There’s a highway exit sign, but no ramp to take. Dean keeps driving. Feels the call of the road, and the call of life, and some other strange pull that manifests as weight on his foot on the gas pedal.

He’s going to drive himself the fuck out of here or he’s going to drive himself crazy.

Castiel asks, “Where are we going?”

“Dead ahead.”

Another hour and he starts to feel the tunnel before he can see it. Like a clock ticking down, silently impeding. Like the Impala is driving itself, steered by the visible fishing line that’s tied around his wrist, hooked onto his arm.

He’s in the middle of educating Castiel on the merits of classic rock over any other type of music when the radio cuts out.

“Dean,” he warns. He can feel it too.

But Dean pretends he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

“Dean, you should turn around.”

He slows, but that’s it.

Castiel reaches out like he’s going to grab the steering wheel, but his hand just hovers in the space between them, watching Dean’s right arm as it twitches and grips tighter.

“What if it gets me out of here?”

“It won’t.”

“How do you know?”

“It won’t, Dean. I’m sorry.”

“But you said the archangels - ”

“Don’t have your best interest in mind. I do.”

Dean eases up on the gas, pulls the slowest u-turn of his life.

“Why do I believe you?”

 

/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\

 

The house is familiar because it’s supposed to be, but not necessarily because it is. Familiar to a version of himself that he no longer is, if he ever really was. He wades through it like he’s walking through two feet of mud, chased by a nagging voice in his head telling him to give it a solid chance before taking off again. If only because there’s nowhere else to go. When he’s itching for something recognizable to this current version of him, longing once more for the feel of leather seats and a steering wheel and the wind flooding through rolled-down windows, he settles for something closer, something stationary, something sweeter.

Dean eats the pie that’s been waiting on the counter since day one, in a perpetually _freshly baked_ state that fills the house with a scent that makes his mouth involuntarily water as he attempts to ignore it. A feat impossible, thanks to all that olfactory memory nonsense. Will heaven ever tire of finding new ways to taunt him?

It’s not as good as he remembers his mother’s apple pie being, which can mean one (or both) of two things, but either way amounts to the enduring fact that he can’t trust anything up here.

Because either he can’t trust his memories to be accurate because he’s blown everything out of proportion and he’s just remembering them how he _wants_ to remember them - already proven true, in some cases - or, possibly, he can’t trust heaven because the fact that it can’t get the details right just proves that it’s all for show. All fake and all too good to be true. 

That being said, it is really fucking good pie. 

And despite everything it cheers him up because it’s the first time he’s eaten anything since dying (not that he _needs_  to eat, but hey, he’s always enjoyed the activity and knows how to appreciate a fine meal).

He’s so cheery in fact that when Castiel is suddenly standing there next to the refrigerator with his usual _how did I get here_ expression (which must just be his face), Dean is feeling gracious enough to share. 

And, of course, he’s got this feeling that once the pie is gone another will magically appear. Infinite pie. Now that’s a heaven that speaks his language. 

But Castiel just stares at the pie when Dean slides the plate over. Walks over to the island counter that Dean’s leaning against and stands opposite him, stiffly.

“Pie,” is all he says.

“Yeah,” Dean replies. “Eat it before I change my mind."

And he does, though warily, and Dean has no idea how someone could be so _unhappy_  and _concerned_  while eating something so delicious, but there it is. He can’t hold back a laugh and Castiel’s brows furrow further at it.

“Dude. It’s just pie. Lighten up."

He does, marginally. Takes a bite of the pie and Dean decidedly looks away from him, at the kitchen cabinets, down the hall.

Dean’s still not calling it _his_ house yet because it’s still too fresh and too weird, and every time he feels like he’s about to settle in ghosts come wandering through uninvited because he can’t quite control the appearances yet.

They creep in because he can’t lock down his thoughts twenty-four-seven, indefinitely, and he doesn’t even get a break when he sleeps because he _doesn’t_  sleep, yet another side effect of timelessness. He doubts dreams would be better, anyway. 

He doesn’t mind seeing Sam, but he never knows _which_ Sam it’s going to be, and any one that isn't baby Sam is disorienting, in this house. Baby Sam asleep in his crib feels like a second chance, even if it is all illusion, and it’s far too late for such fantasies. That’s not what this is.

And every time he sees his dad he can’t help but think he’s there to tear Dean away from it all. This house, this supposed happy ending that heaven should be, and back into a monster-laden nightmare world by threat of family obligation. He never thinks that he actually does want to stay except for in those (brief) moments, but that’s good enough, for now, to keep him put.

He still hasn’t seen his mom. Not since that first glimpse of her by the peach tree, when he drove past on Memory Lane and she sat so far from where he passed that her face was virtually featureless. He just hears her singing, whispering, catches the briefest glimpses of her hair or a billowing skirt as she rounds a corner away from him and disappears. It’s useless, trying to chase her, so he doesn’t bother. He’ll see her soon enough, he does have _forever_  after all. At the moment, it’s too much. He’s worried, but of what, it’s hard to say. Possibly it’s just that he doesn’t know what to expect.

So instead, he expects nothing, and he gets nothing.

Castiel is still chewing his pie like it might actually be poisoned and it’s become more annoying than its original endearing, killing Dean’s buzz, so while he’s low he decides to just go ahead and revive the subject he’s been pretending not to think about.

“So, these archangels."

Castiel's gaze jerks up from his plate, pie immediately forgotten, and Dean swallows nervously. They’ve both been tiptoeing around this for a reason, the couple of times they’ve seen each other since the information has come to light, but Castiel is the only one that _knows_  that reason, and that’s the problem.

“You know what they want me for.” He thinks maybe statements might get him more answers than questions. Less direct, demanding facts in a roundabout way, because instead of refusing to answer, Castiel must either confirm or deny.

He speaks slowly. “I do,” he says, but that’s it.

“I’m waiting."

And now Castiel just looks pissed and it makes Dean feel smug even though he’s still out of the loop because from the way that Cas is absently stabbing his pie with his fork, Dean can tell that he _wants_ to tell him what he knows, even if he won’t, ever more infuriating for both of them.

“All that matters is that they can’t get to you."

“ _Is_ that all that matters? If they’re planning something that _involves_ me, I’d say I have a right to know what it is.”

“Dean, trust me."

“At least tell me who the fuck they are.”

It’s like pulling teeth, like tug-of-war, like Dean is asking Castiel to help him cheat on some test while the teacher isn’t looking because he didn’t study and Castiel of course did. He wants Dean to accept the consequences to his lack of action, but it’s not fair, Dean didn’t choose to be dead, and they’ve already discussed that he shouldn’t be.

“Can’t fight someone if I don’t know who they are."

And finally, “Zachariah, Michael, Uriel. If they find you, run."

“Run where? It’s not like I got a lot of options.” 

“I don’t know,” he snaps, blue flashing, and then he sighs heavily, briefly shimmering like that first night at the tunnel. “It doesn’t matter. They know where you are, but they can’t get to you. If you stay here you should be safe."

Should be does not equal _will_ be: a lesson he’d learned a long time ago.

Dean cuts himself yet another slice of pie (assuming he can eat as much as he wants up here without feeling full, getting sick, etc.) and another for Castiel too, even though there’s still some left on his plate; it gives him that much more to do. He moves both plates to the kitchen table, takes a seat, and beckons for Castiel to follow.

He does, reluctantly, and Dean can see just how badly he wants to _poof_ away from this conversation. 

The one answer is better than nothing, but he needs more. 

“And where do you fit into this?” 

“I am trying to help you."

“Well, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m already dead. Could’ve used that help earlier."

“I’m sorry."

“Goddammit, Cas."

They sit. They eat. Castiel relaxes, but he bleeds tension like a waterfall, so the level is relative. The sun sets outside, faster than it would in the real world, and the lights in the kitchen turn themselves on of their own accord, lest they be left to sit in darkness. 

Just like when they were in the Impala, it begins to feel comfortable, as the distasteful conversation fades away. It feels familiar, sitting there with Castiel in the kitchen of his childhood home. Like it had happened a million times before (which certainly it hadn’t) and the thought is absurd. He still barely knows Castiel, he trusts him mostly because he doesn't have a concrete reason not to, and he's the only other thing up here with him that is capable of holding a conversation. He doesn't want to blow what might be his only chance at company. _Maybe_ it can be considered company, in its own weird way. But Castiel isn’t here to be _friends_. He's here to _help_ (whatever the hell that means), as he’s made so abundantly clear.

“May I have another?"

“What?” Dean glances up from his pie, not having expected him to speak again, or that he would necessarily still be there. He’d expected his usual personal brand of awkward silence to endure until he finally, and without warning, disappeared.

“May I have another slice of pie?” he repeats.

“Oh, sure.” And Dean starts to get up, but - 

“I can get it myself.” 

Dean watches as he crosses the room back to the counter, on which sits a freshly baked, whole pie in place of the one they had been eating. He was right, infinite pie.

He cuts a slice and brings it back to the table. It’s not apple pie this time, it’s pecan, and Dean’s mouth starts watering just looking at it, and as Castiel starts to cut himself a bite he stops, catching Dean staring.

Castiel smiles, barely, just that little quirk of the corner of his mouth, and slides the plate over to Dean before getting back up to get himself another one.

Maybe, in part, Cas is here to be friends.

 

/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\

 

The lake provides a much needed respite from the past, so he watches Sam’s life, or the little glimpses of it that he’s allowed. Even if he doesn’t get to see much there’s a feeling that hangs over him that everything is _okay_ , at least for the time being.

Relatively okay, because Sam’s still working cases with their dad, still hunting and chasing the yellow-eyed demon, making _okay_ a relative term and Dean becomes queasy thinking that with just one mistake either of them could be up here with him. And Cas makes it worse when he says that Sam would never be _with him_ in heaven. He would get his own heaven, that’s just the way it works. 

Dean tries to make himself feel better by chucking his empty beer bottle at Cas, but he pops away and it just falls through the empty space where his head had been, landing without shattering with an unsatisfying _thud_ on the dock. 

He feels like he’s been at the lake for about two days, but he’s watched two _weeks_ of Sam’s life, not sure if the difference is because Dean’s just getting the cliff notes of what he’s missed while wallowing up here on his own, or if things are just slower where he’s at. 

Sometime during the marathon of silent lake films he tries another serious conversation with Cas (who eventually makes another appearance, once he thinks Dean’s had adequate time to cool down and won’t throw anything else at him). Maybe Cas can dodge beer bottles, but he can’t dodge Dean’s questions forever, even if there’s nothing to stop him from trying.

He’s just standing there over Dean’s shoulder, watching the water with him. At the moment, nothing significant is happening in Sam’s day, so Dean allows the intrusion.

Then Sam goes to bed; the movie ends. Neither of them move.

After a prolonged silent moment, Cas reaches out to catch Dean’s attention (as if he isn’t acutely aware of Cas' presence) by placing a hand on his shoulder. The touch, intended to be light, seems to burn through the sleeve of his shirt and seer his skin. Dean jolts away, not from the sensation, which is at once distressing yet consoling, but from the sudden and violently overwhelming sense of déjà vu.

The moment the contact is broken, as Dean leans away, it disappears, replaced by the feeling that he’s forgotten something desperately important and Cas is left next to him staring at his hand yet again like it doesn’t belong to him. 

Dean resettles where he sits and the dock creaks below him, drawing Cas' attention back to the present moment.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

Dean knows it’s not only for the shock, but something deeper that neither of them can seem to recollect.

“What’s going on here, Cas?"

“What do you mean?"

Dean drags a hand over his face, as if he could wipe away the confusion, and looks back out over the lake. This was a bad idea; he doesn’t have the words for it.

He settles for, “I  _know_ you. Like, I know that I never met you when I was alive, but I remember you. Don't know how, I just know that I know you."

Cas is silent and still for a long time, frozen like a statue, and Dean thinks he’s overstepped. He wants to take it back because even though he didn’t mean it to be this way he feels like he’s stepped in too close, too imitate for whatever reason because he lost some sort of vital, invisible history. The pages have been torn from the books and the middle of the map has been ripped to shreds and all he’s left with is a broken compass to find his way back home. 

The needle points to Cas, and he doesn’t know why.

"I think…” Cas hesitates, “I think, that in another timeline, you lived."

“Another... timeline."

“You lived. Or, you died, but I saved you, and ..."

He just want’s to find his way back home.

"And what?"

"I don't know.” Cas' voice nearly breaks and that’s enough for Dean to finally turn around to look at him. He wants to catch the elusive emotion of the face of that statue but he’s too late. Always composed, this angel, when Dean wants him to impart something real. "Like you said, there are no specifics, I just know."

"Why do you get to know more than me?"

"I am an angel."

"Not fair.” For once, Cas has the common sense to recognize it doesn't demand a response. But Dean still kind of wants one from him anyway.

So they sit quietly a while longer, trying and failing to determine how they know all these things they shouldn’t know, and what exactly those things are. 

"I think,” Cas says after a year of silence, "it's better this way."

"But I'm _dead_."

"I know."

 

/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\

 

He picks up the books again, reading fervently for lack of anything better to do, for a change of pace, and because of that nagging thing Castiel had said. _In another timeline_. Bullshit, most likely, but it almost makes sense, and the books are the closest he has to a puzzle piece.

The books are about him, his life, his death, and once he gets past the weird disconnect, it’s not so much _reading_ as it feels like _thinking_. He’s never been much of a reader, but they play more like movies while his eyes trace the pages. One long movie, or a _TV show_ , if you will. Kind of makes more sense that way, actually, so that’s how he starts to think about it.

That first chunk holds twenty-two books, he went back and counted, and then the second wave appeared with another twenty-two. 

It feels like his life, but it isn't his life, even though Cas implied that it was, and it's infinitely easier to think of it as fiction, even if that explanation feels like a lie. 

So he believes the first season, because that shit _actually happened_ to him, word for word and then some. Second season makes him a little queasy, but he can’t deny its plausibility. His own deal mirroring his dad’s. Makes sense, ever following in the footsteps, _watch out for Sammy_. It makes sense, in some twisted way.

As he reads, he remembers, but it’s not exactly _memories_ like anything he’s ever known before, which hold a sort of physicality in his past. His book life isn’t like that, too elusive and fleeting, an out of body experience, sometimes a sort of muscle memory, or suppressed reflexes, and sometimes he knows how a conversation will end before he’s read its conclusion.

The day after he finishes the second season, a third appears. He mostly expects it, but there is only sixteen this time. So he dies, goes to hell. And this doesn’t really shock him or hit him hard at all, because he’d had a whole sixteen books to prepare him for it, providing no way out, and, of course, since he’s actually already dead over in this timeline. Been there, done that. Dying, not hell, and he admits he’s glad he dodged that bullet.

He thinks maybe it took him a week to get through these first three seasons, maybe two weeks, again there’s no real way to know, but when he picks up the first of the fourth season, he’s _weary_ like he hadn’t just spent and inordinate amount of time sitting on the dock, or by the tree, or laying in the grass or on the couch. Like he’d slowly and painstakingly trudged through each and every case himself, like he’d been emotionally drained and idling in hell during the gap between these last two novels. 

He’s been alone in his heaven for these long yet oh so short weeks during which he’s lived two years and a day, and it feels too quiet because the memories that usually dwell beside him have pressed pause while he wades through his other life, trying not to confuse the conflicting histories. It’s been too quiet without a visit from Cas in all that time. 

He would be worried, except he recognizes that Cas has a life outside of sneaking up on him and intruding, though Dean’s gotten used to the visits without realizing it, and honestly he's a little hurt that Cas seems to have forgotten about him.

Instead, he sticks his nose back in the _Supernatural_ book, reading the first sentence with renewed focus.

It doesn’t last long. 

The calm of the impossibly still house is knocked on its head when all the windows in the house break simultaneously and Dean jumps up from where he sits on an armchair in the living room, the book flying from his hands and onto the carpet a few feet away.

At first the glass just cracks and spider webs, but it’s _loud_ like it’s more than just the fifteen or so windows in the house. Like it’s a thousand floor-to-ceiling monstrosities surrounding him in a cube of cracked glass. 

He stands there waiting for the worst of it that he knows is still coming and braces himself. 

 _Not again_ , he thinks. It’s like the Impala crash all over again, when he first got here and the invisible semi-truck first reenacted his death for his deluded mind. Only this one he can’t tie to any specific event in his life. If it was fire, maybe, but not broken windows. Nothing he remembers could have done this. No hurricanes in Kansas, no enormous, magic tornadoes because this isn't the _Wizard of Oz_.

Phase two comes with another hit, and the cracks multiply and there’s no seeing through the glass at all anymore, too distorted and cloudy and the sunlight from the outside is obstructed and the room dims, almost foggy.

And then comes phase three. The world goes dark, the lamps flickering on, world inverted, as the glass shatters entirely and the shards burst inwards towards the center of the room where Dean is standing, but they just hover in midair instead of falling. Dean raises an arm to cover his face, but it’s unnecessary. Nothing touches him.

The orange lamplight shining through the glass fragments casts eerie, shifting shadows on the walls and the furniture and everything looks like it has come to life, waking from a lifetime of slumber, muscles thawing and moving ever so slowly as they regain consciousness. It’s an illusion (he thinks).

Dean’s frozen in place, afraid that the glass would tear into his skin if he so much as brushed against it, but the explosion left a bubble of unoccupied space around him, about an arm’s length radius. 

The glass catches reflections of things that aren’t there (why must everything in heaven do that?) and all he can make out are eyes, cold and hard and glaring, watching him and daring him to make his move to escape while warning him not to, or else.

He goes for it anyway.

He bends slowly to pick up the fallen book, to use as whatever sort of shield it could function as, to move the glass from his path, and takes a tentative step towards the doorway. 

He needn’t have worried. As he moves his little bubble of space moves with him, glass floating out of his way.

He lets out a shaky laugh and a hiss rises up through the room in response, from the glass and howling winds through the hollow spaces where the windows had been and then a voice breaks through. It’s strained and coming from the glass itself in a way that makes it sound like whoever is speaking is trying to do so through a mouthful of the shattered pieces, scraping and crunching against one another with each word.

“ _You can’t hide, we know where you are._ "

“Yeah?” Dean says, taking another step back, “Well I think Cas is right and you can’t actually get me, though, can you?"

The hiss turns into a screech and the glass shards start spinning in place, and maybe they can’t touch him, but the noise feels like it will make his ears bleed and the light flashing off the glass is burning his eyes as he runs form the room, from the house, and out to the lake. 

As he runs he sees (and feels somehow) a blue glow radiating from within the house, creeping around the edges of his vision and cooling his skin. It’s different, it isn’t the same force that broke the glass. It’s different.

He doesn’t look back. He sits on the dock. The screeching is gone but his ears are still ringing and he knows that whoever was responsible for it is gone, chased away by the blue. Zach or Mike or whoever the hell else Cas had warned him about.

He half expects Cas to make an appearance now, but he doesn’t. Dean tries to check in on Sam, for something to distract himself since he’s at the lake anyway, but it's the middle of the night down there. Sam is fast asleep.

Until now Dean hadn’t been entirely sure he even believed Cas, but there is no denying it now, solid proof. But it still doesn't do anything to explain Cas himself.

Now more than ever he needs answers. No escaping the hunting life even in the _afterlife_ , and really, he should have seen this coming. Unfortunately the only library he can get his hands on is nothing but a play by play of the last year of his life and _some other life_  that just adds more confusion to the mix.

So much for research. 

 

/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\

 

The glass doesn't replace itself. He can’t say why, and he tries to fix it but it seems that weird angel magic can’t be reversed with sheer willpower. What a shame.

He stares at the books for too long before picking the one he’d left off on back up again. He’d read only one sentence before the windows shattered and it left him with a bad taste in his mouth. He’s paraphrasing, but the first line goes a little something like this:

 _Dean clawed out of his own grave with red in his eyes and dirt in his lungs_.

When he reads over it again, it’s almost as if he can actually taste the earth in his mouth and stuck in his throat, choking him, but when he tires to cough to clear his lungs there’s nothing but air.

This is of course when Cas decides to end his week-or-so-long absence, while Dean is mid-fruitless coughing fit.

Dean sits up straight and tries to look more reputable and less insane under Cas’ stern yet confused gaze, and to distract him, Dean thrusts a hand out to point at the hole in the wall where the nearest window used to be.

“What the hell, Cas?"

“I tried to stop them, but - ”

“Well fan-fucking-tastic job with that one."

His glare rivals the hellfire that Dean can still see flickering behind his eyelids when he blinks.

“I’m _sorry_ , Dean, but I don’t think you understand what’s happening out there."

“No,” he says and stands up, a weak attempt to intimidate, if he’s being honest, and he ignores Cas’ second mumbled sentence sounding like _I don’t know if I do either_.

“Because,” Dean insists, “you won’t _tell_ me. We’ve been here before, Cas. I recognize that tree.”

“Have we?” He speaks too softly for their current anger-fueled exchange, blue eyes clouding over, possibly out of anger or possibly because the question hanging in the air is part of a different conversation, referring to several unrelated moments all at once, and it’s impossible to tell which one this particular query is a part of.

Dean saves them the trouble of deciphering. “I tried… look, I can’t really research and hunt up here, Cas, and to be honest I don’t even know what I’d be looking for."

“ _The Righteous Man_ ,” Cas mumbles and he doesn’t meet Dean’s eye when he says it and it’s so hushed and almost incomprehensible that maybe he hadn’t meant to allow the sound to escape his lips in the first place.

Then he looks up, eyes snapping to Dean's. “You aren’t supposed to be here."

“Yeah, so you’ve said. I shouldn’t be dead - "

“No. You were supposed to go to hell."

Dean’s eyes flicker over the discarded book on the couch, hoping Cas doesn’t notice. Of course he does. But he says nothing.

“The archangels are trying to change the rules and rewrite the past and - these are things that aren’t supposed to be changed, to dire and potentially catastrophic effect. It seems your presence here has served as a catalyst and has sent them into a frenzy. You should have lived, you should have gone to hell, and -” he cuts himself off, and instead of speaking just flexes and then clenches his right fist where it hangs at his side.

Dean knows this. He’s _just_ read that book, but the fact that Cas seems to know a few too many details about Dean’s side of the story makes him a little uneasy. It’s not Cas' life to know, but he’s still talking like it is, and he knows all about his deal to save Sam. But here - if everything’s going so wrong, why can he do so little about it? They’re playing this game without him.

“And Sam - " Cas starts.

“No. You leave Sam out of this. They can have me, I don’t give a shit, but you leave him be."

“I wasn’t trying to drag him into this, Dean. I’m trying to keep you _both_  out. But the truth is that without the pair of you, their plan could never succeed."

Dean slides back down onto the couch behind him. His limbs feel heavy and these conversations with Cas always leave him with more questions than he has when they begin.

“You have to promise me you won’t let them use you."

“Yeah, whatever, Cas.” He lifts the book back from where it’d fallen. He continues, trying to sound disinterested, “Why do you even care anyway?"

“Why do you still insist on thinking I _don’t_?"

One day he’ll be able to guilt Cas into telling him the truth, and he refuses to feel bad about it.

 

/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\

 

As soon as Cas is gone, Dean goes directly to the lake and watches Sam for as long as he can stomach (a few days at most, to the end of his current case), to confirm that he’s okay, or at the very least that any of his current woes are not angel-related and instead strictly Azazel-related. (This doesn’t actually make him feel any better.) As far as he can tell both Sam and John remain blissfully unaware that angels or heaven or _God_  or any of this bullshit that Dean’s gotten mixed up with even exist. (This _does_  make him feel better, to some small degree.)

Dean is perfectly content for it to stay that way at present, and for a very, very long time to come.

Eventually he has to concede that he’s accomplishing nothing, obsessively watching Sam’s movements in the reflections, so he goes back inside. He eats some pie. He listens to some Zeppelin. He burns the second season book in which Sam dies. (This too helps, marginally.)

He sets a memory of his mom humming while she cooks on repeat in the kitchen and returns to the living room to read, once again, the book that makes him feel like he really is six feet under.

Season four.

Back on solid ground after he climbs out of hell only to be plagued by more searing pain, bright lights, and screeching noises not at all unlike (but to a greater degree) the strange sunsets and radios static of his first nights in heaven.

Then: enter Castiel, Angel of the Lord.

This is where he stops reading.

Rationally, he knows that Cas has his own well of knowledge that he’s privy to, from which he gets in information, but Dean’s already pissed at him, and he’s pissed at the rest of the angels, and he’s extremely pissed at the fact that he’s dead when he’s not supposed to be and is continually reminded of that fact, so all his _rational_  reactions fly right out the window. 

The windows that still lack glass panes no matter what he does.

“I pray to Castiel, to get his feathery ass down here.”

Poof. Right behind him, about two feet too close and it bothers him more than it usually does.

“Did you read these?” Dean asks, spinning around and waving the copy of _Lazarus Rising_  in Cas’ face.

“No.” He looks genuinely confused; Dean doesn’t care. He ignores Cas’ somewhat endearing confusion, tilted head, squinted eyes, and claiming he has no idea what Dean's talking about. _He fucking knows_.

“Is this where you’re getting all your weirdo cryptic information? Cause I gotta say, Cas, not cool. That’s a serious invasion of privacy.” 

For all he knows Cas has been lurking around invisible and reading over his shoulder or sneaking peeks at the books when Dean is wrapped up in a memory or down at the lake. Spending all that time that he’s not with Dean  _reading_. It’s why he never tells Dean where he goes.

Or - 

“You fucking know everything already, don’t you? This other timeline bullshit that you’ve spun. I struggle to piece it together and remember, but we both know you’re playing by different rules. You actually _lived_ it, didn’t you? Not some other version of you, but _actually you_." 

Dean ignores the bewildered look on Cas' face, and he ignores the hunched shoulders and the defensive stance like he’s being physically attacked because Dean knows that’s all that’s stopping him from _actually_ physically attacking something.

It’s one thing to be left out of the loop on a few details, but the more he learns the more he realizes that, in this case, he happens to be the center of that loop, the one thing that everything else is wrapped around, and yet he’s the only fucking one who is completely and overwhelmingly oblivious as to what’s happening.

“Just tell me what the hell is going on, or leave."

But Cas isn’t looking at him anymore. He’s looking at the walls, that have started vibrating where they stand and at the picture frames rattling against the white paint. 

“Dean, you have to calm down."

“Don’t tell me what to do!” he shouts, like some defiant child being told to eat his greens, and even as he says it, he can feel his anger rising and the walls shaking more violently, and one of the pictures falls to the carpet. A photo of him holding Sam as a newborn.

Cas has a point, and he doesn’t want to admit it, but he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, squares his shoulders, and says, “I’m just trying to understand what’s happening.”

He opens his eyes to see Cas regarding him introspectively, blue eyes melting, and -  

“Me too. I’m sorry, Dean. I promise I haven't read your books."

 

/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\

 

Time has moved in strange, nonexistent patterns since he arrived in heaven, but somehow, with the discovery of the books, the notion of Cas' timeline theory, and even just persistent presence of Cas, it’s become even harder to follow. Like Dean somehow stumbled into science fiction when he wasn’t watching his step, and time is moving in several directions at once, with him caught between the warring winds.

Forwards, backwards, in circles, and to histories and futures that he thinks might never have happened.

Sometimes he doesn’t know how old he is, who he’s supposed to be with. Is he fifteen being driven around by his father, or is he twenty-six, thirty, himself at the wheel and Cas beside him, with archangels hot on their heels? If it’s now or _then_ , it’s hard to say.

Sometimes he’s in several places at once or none at all, an empty room that he would have sworn had held something once, out in a field of nothing but mud, out by the lake that’s dried into a pond.

The whiplash gives him headaches, makes the phantom scar on his arm burn with vengeance, when he’s not paying enough attention to force it down, let’s it sneak up. The whiplash is worse than the sort he got from the crash, maybe, or he’s become so desensitized, still catching the wreck now and then in the corner of his eye. Tessa whispering for him to let it go and waiting for him in his nightmares, if he were allowed to dream.

For once he’s glad he isn’t.

When he reads he books, he can lose himself in that world, for a while. When he’s with Cas, he can stay with him, even if he doesn’t know for sure where they stand. Doesn’t know if he wants to know. But it’s something to keep him grounded, at the very least.

But when he’s alone, he can’t stop the wheel turning, can’t control where it takes him.

 

/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\

 

It’s too little too late, but  _finally_ Cas shares what’s left of his insight on the inner workings of heaven’s highest rank: those allegedly atrocious archangels.

“They want to start the apocalypse."

Dean’s lying on the couch, oblivious to Cas' entrance, but at his declaration, he looks up from a _Supernatural_ paperback he’s in the middle of and glares. “No shit.”

“They - wait, what?”

He folds the corner of the page to mark his place and waves it as Cas as he sits up. He’s still pissed, but maybe they can get somewhere this time.

“The books, Cas. I got a feel for what happened then, but _now -_ how about you start from the beginning."

“This _is_ the beginning."

It doesn’t feel like it, but the way things have been going… Dean lets him have this one.

Eventually he drags the full story from Cas, or at least as much of the story as there is. In some ways it’s the same as the other timeline, in some, of course, it’s not. There are some gaps and holes that don't seem to add up. Mostly, the _how_  and the _why_ of it all, because it’s not like Dean’s hiding, exactly. He’s living it up (dead) in their own backyard, for the taking, unable to do anything but wait.

“Honestly, I’m not sure how it works,” Cas says. “But I’m guessing that if they need permission to use you as a vessel, they need permission to take you from here as well."

“Okay, well I’m not up for being their puppet, so I don’t think there will be a problem."

Cas shakes his head. “I’ve seem them do it before, on a smaller scale. Rip people from their heaven for their own selfish reasons or the _greater good_. Even if something is blocking them for now.”

“But what’s stopping them? It’s not me.”

“I don’t know. That’s the problem, but eventually they’ll find a way in.”

“Shouldn’t like, I don’t know, _God_  step in or something? I mean, the apocalypse is some heavy shit.” Even now Dean doesn’t quite know if he believes in God, despite the fact that he’s in heaven, and without meaning to he wonders again why Cas can be here if no one else is allowed.

“God is…”

Apparently, God is dead. Or gone. The book version of their lives said as much, but he was holding on to hope, not that he’s ever before hoped for divine intervention.

Dean thinks the difference between dead and gone doesn’t matter, but Cas seems to believe otherwise. An absent father is something Dean understands, except somehow, now he’s still got his lording over him in his grave, even if it is just ghosts from the past with nothing new to add.

But Cas seems to be swimming against the current, face wrought with worry, though he tries to hide it.

It’s a stupid little nothing, but Dean’s stuck with the urge to reach out to him or touch his hand or something, but remains still. The gesture would be out of place, and a larger part of him is still angry.

“I’m sorry, Cas. Really.”

His expression turns deliberately blank when he meets Dean’s eye, and he nods, dismissing the subject, picking up as if it hadn’t been mentioned in the first place.

“It has been a slow and maddening decent into chaos that they believe the apocalypse will fix, but I know that they are wrong."

 

/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\

 

He regrets his animosity towards Cas, but as he reads, less so. The Castiel in the books proves just as stubborn and difficult to talk to as the one he knows. Every time he thinks the relationship is warming towards something resembling friendship something cuts a line between them. It’s wistfully true for both timelines. A familiar struggle. Even the words are familiar.

He feels nauseous but he pushes through.

By the lake the winds pick up, waves crashing on the nearby shore and splashing him where he sits on the dock. The trunk of the peach tree splits in half, as if sliced by some invisible sword, and one half crashes to the ground in a mess of leaves and broken branches while the other remains upright, as if nothing had happened.

He blames the archangels. (And maybe Cas, just a little bit.)

He blames them for just about everything. For the nightmarish hue that’s tinted the memories playing around him for several days now. His parents fighting, Sam falling and breaking his wrist. He blames them for his only being able to see (in the lake) the hard parts of Sam’s hunts, and never the resolution.

They’re trying to wear him down and it’s working. Cas comes back to update him on their efforts, but this time he doesn’t need it. He’s already read it. The details remain different in the books than in real life (death), but the gist is enough.

As Cas had pointed out, when Dean lets his guard down, they can get that much closer, and once they’re in, they’re in. He’s always had trouble managing his anger and they’re slowly stripping away his resolve until there’s nothing left and he _doesn’t care_ anymore.

He tosses the book into the lake and gets ready for a fight.

All at once there are hurricanes around him like it’s the end times and he supposes that’s the point, a little preview. End of the world and everything he loves. He can see it. Histories and futures of his life and Sammy’s and everyone else he’s ever cared about, some he remembers and some he doesn’t quite, but it doesn’t matter. Wind catches them beneath their feet and rips them from the earth, a thousand and more feet in the air and everything they’ve built for themselves comes raining and crashing to the ground, now pockmarked and cratered with the remains.

 _This is your fault,_  it’s telling him. His fault for not complying, laying down and letting them walk all over him. For not letting them walk _inside him_  to do their dirty work and _you could stop all of this,_  it tells him. 

But Dean's skilled in the arts of seduction and knows this is no way to do it. With threats and lies and fear. No sir. The trick is in promises and sweet nothings and mindless ramblings of a forever that exists only until the sun rises. The real magic is that you can’t be fooled unless you want to be. 

He is the eye of the storm as the world around him decays in an unparalleled state of chaos. It’s surreal, it’s terrifying, it’s exhilarating and he’s tempted to throw himself into the madness just to see what it feels like, but as he steps forward it moves with him, around him, almost like it’s breathing as he breathes, as he lives (in death) and strides forward, parting the Red Sea. Like he’s the power that’s fueling the storm even as he knows it has nothing to do with him, and yet he’s still the one in control. 

He looks straight up to where his brain logically thinks that angels should reside even though all he sees is blinding white peeking out around impossibly black storm clouds and there’s no one there and he shouts -

“You can’t fucking touch me, you dicks! I’m not playing your game."

So he runs. Not from anything, but just because he can. They’re trying to trap him but this is _his_ heaven and he can go wherever he wants and do whatever he pleases and maybe there is this cage made of unnatural natural disasters surrounding him but it’s _not enough_.

But it’s whispering so many things in his ear, quiet even though the storm’s so loud. _You can save them,_ but that’s the thing. No one can save them and no one should, because even if all that results is their own demise, they had the freedom to make that so. Humans are stupid but why give them that quality if they’re not allowed to exercise it. Freedom, of speech, of press, of love, fucking  _free will_. It’s the most precious gift and that’s why everyone ( _everyone_ ) is always trying to take it away from everyone else, mad and power hungry. That’s how he knows it’s so great, that everyone wants it, because maybe he doesn’t deserve it, but at least he knows it's worth something.

Dean followed his dad his whole life and did _everything_ he said even if he didn’t agree, but now he’s done. It’s unfortunate that it took death for him to revel in freedom, but here he is and now that he’s gotten a taste he's not turning around, not taking orders anymore.

He’s still running faster than he knows he should be able to and far past the point when his muscles and lungs should have given out but there’s no constraints up here. Freedom at its best. 

He’s running for a long time as the world around him continues to fester, as worlds and lives rise up only to fall and he’s trying hard not to look at the faces in the dust. Too abstractly formed, anyway, for him to catch anyone’s eye. But it’s beautiful and it’s terrifying, this mad unrelenting, unbiased destruction of all in its path. It’s beautiful but it’s so sad he wants to claw his eyes out just so he doesn’t have to see it anymore, while at the same time, the colors and the movement and the kaleidoscope manipulations bending the air around him are the prettiest thing he’s ever seen. 

And it's almost _funny_ , that he finds it beautiful. It’s death, it’s destruction, it’s a projection of the end of the world at his own fingertips and he doesn’t want to look away or do a single thing to stop it. He had always been the one trying to save the world and everyone, but it doesn't seem to matter now. He’s so used to everything falling apart and it’s never going to end. Whether or not he says yes or no. It’s hilarious. 

So he stops running and falls to the ground in a fit of hysterics and he’s laughing and clutching his stomach and truly winded in a way that’s not from the running. He tries to breathe through it, rolls on to his back and stares up and away from the hurricanes, hearing them more than he sees them. All he sees is blue sky now, as he breathes once, twice, still laughing, but it's really just delirious giggling.

The blue sky morphs until it’s melding with the storm, and it slows from impossibly fast to still way too fucking fast, but it’s all a blue whirlwind now, and quieter, steadier, almost melodic. Then from nowhere, lightening strikes, silently, a million and one tiny electric blue wires fusing with the renegade winds. And then a single massive bolt cracks loud and collides with the ground somewhere to his left. He can feel the energy of it sparking in the dirt somewhere below him. 

The whole storm is gone in that instant, like it had never even been there.

Dean looks to his left and maybe ten feet away, there he is, Castiel in all his glory, crouched low, head down and one hand out in front of him in the grass to steady himself. He’s in a ring of scorched earth, and the grass is smoldering and there's embers hovering, and Cas himself is smoking like he’d been on fire too. Apparently that’s what happens when traveling by lightning bolt, and Dean starts laughing harder even though it really is a rather dramatic entrance.

Then Cas looks up at him, eyes flashing blue, and pushes himself up, a silver blade slipping from the right sleeve of his trench coat and into his waiting hand. He looks around nervously before glaring at Dean.

“What the hell is wrong with you?"

Dean’s still laughing and he might be crying.

“I don’t know, Cas. Good question."

Dean’s hysterical and it’s doing nothing to stop the storm from threatening to rage once more. 

Cas has a white-knuckle grip on his silver blade and his eyes dart around, not staying on anything for more than half a second, and the winds have picked up so fast that nothing is still enough for him to focus on anyway.

“Dean,” Cas yells over the noise, “You can stop them if - "

But Dean can’t really hear him all that well over the storm or possibly over his personal insanity, and it doesn’t matter, _he doesn’t care_. He doesn’t need Cas to tell him how or why he can stop them because he already knows. He’s not taking orders from anyone anymore.

He pushes himself up off the ground, and stands, and shouts up at the sky, _"Fuck all of you fucking meddling angels. I don’t want anything to do you with your shit_."

Much to his surprise (and that of Cas) the storm listens and slows to a breeze and a drizzle. But it’s not _enough,_ and he says it before he has a chance to think it through, the words blossoming like firecrackers in his throat:

“That means you too, Cas."

Cas stops moving so abruptly that what little wind is left doesn't even touch him anymore, the bottom of his jacket turned to lead, and the blade flashes dangerously, but not as dangerous as his eyes.

"What?"

 _It’s for the best_.

"Get out of here, Cas. I'm done."

"You don't mean that."

He can't stop the words from tumbling out of his mouth. "Yeah, I do."

This is when the levee breaks.

 


	3. PART THREE

It happens so fast he barely even knows it happened until it’s said and done.

Cas is staring at him with steel eyes and composure made of ice that he cuts his words from. "I think – I know a way to keep them out for good, and it will lock me out too."

Dean stays silent, already having backed himself into a corner, and the world is too bright and Cas is too hard.

“It can’t be undone. At least,” Cas keeps talking like he can’t stop, sentences wavering, “you won’t be able to undo it on your own, and I – if I’m not here, I can’t – “

But then Dean cuts him off, saves him trouble of filling the space, because neither of them can listen to the rambling. He asks, with pure curiosity, why Cas had never mentioned it before. "Have you known about this?" But it comes out sharp and resentful.

Cas nods. "Yes, but it didn't -" he keeps faltering; a flicker of movement beneath his skin and then it's back to marble, and his words resolute. "I was being selfish."

Cas is gone and then he's back in an instant and there's a flash of some angel magic, and then painted, dripping letters in an indecipherable language all over _everything_. The grass, the sky, burned into his eyelids for all he knows. It's all he can see.

Then Cas moves swiftly into Dean's space, regards him with a pained expression he's no longer trying to hide, and gently touches two fingers to Dean's forehead.

Like heated metal on his skin, and it burns and there's a shock of electricity running through him that forces his eyes closed. When he opens them, Cas is gone, and the writing is gone, and he's back in his own front yard, house standing tall and imposing on his wide open sky.

All that's left of the storm and whatever the hell Cas has done is the faint trembling in Dean’s fingers as he runs them through his hair. In his thighs as he takes a wavering step towards the door. He might be in shock.

There's nothing left to do but go inside.

 

**/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\**

 

Azazel is dead. Back down on the earth. Dean doesn’t know how. He _missed_ it. From the moment he goes back in the house he buries his self-pitying nose in the latest _Supernatural_  book and doesn't look up until he finishes season four, and by that time, it’s already said and done. Said and done for years in the books, but not in the world he’s from.

It doesn't make him feel any better, now that he is, and he never believed that it would.

When he finally checks in with the silent lake films, it's too late. He’s missed the big showdown (he assumes) where John and Sam kicked his demonic ass, and somehow he finds he doesn’t care _how_  it happened so long as the deed is done. And thank god it’s done.

He wants to ask Cas what happens to demons when they die, to make sure it’s for good, but Cas must have been telling the truth when he said he’d be locked out. Part of Dean wasn't so sure, but he hasn’t shown his face since the storm.

Other than the slight feeling of _resolution_  that settles over him, he knows it really is over, some time later when he goes to the lake and sees Sam sitting in the offices of some Stanford building, discussing his options for finishing his degree. 

A few weeks after this (but only days to Dean) John dies. Natural causes. Heart attack. Dean never would have guessed it. Both John’s death and his own were so  _ordinary_ , and he expects the same of Sam-the-future-lawyer.

He wants to ask Cas where his dad will end up, heaven or hell, but it makes no difference that Cas isn’t around for this one, because he already knows the answer. Even if heaven’s security is lax enough to let Dean through, John would never make it through the front door.

He’s cremated, there’s a wake, sort of, and Dean watches the whole thing. It’s just Sam and Bobby and Ellen and Jo that show up, the only family left.

Did they do the same for Dean? Did he miss it in the haze of sunsets and confusion in his first days? Or is it only now that their revenge-fueled adventure is through that they have time for such conveniences?

His bet is on the latter.

So that’s it. It’s over. Azazel is dead, their mother avenged and even though his own part has been done for a while nothing _felt_ finished until now. If he were still alive he’d be much in the same position he’s been in since he died: what now?

There’s all sorts of shit still lurking out there in the dark. He’d keep hunting, if only for the lack of anything better. It’s all he’s ever known and even if he wanted something else he wouldn’t know how. His life (death) is a prime example of a dead end.

/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\

Without a doubt, Dean falls into that cliché of not knowing what he wants until it's gone, or until it’s far too late, or when he's certain he can't have it.

The cliché fits like a fucking glove, and the only exception to this is that even when he was alive he wanted to be _alive_  (just maybe not in the way he actually lived). That one's not so hard to figure out. And he's always known that hunters die young.

Or younger than they should.

There had always been some twisted part of him that was waiting for it.

But he'd envisioned going down in some big blaze of glory while saving the world from something unspeakable. Too many hours spent reading comic books in the backs of libraries while Sam studied. He should have been doing the same instead of building up unfulfillable grand fantasies of himself as a hero.

The worst of it might even be how _anticlimactic_  his death had been. He's dead, whatever, but a car crash? How utterly mundane, even if the car was driven by a demon.

He never even came close to saving the world. He failed his brother, his father, his mother in failing to avenge her. He couldn't even save himself, when push came to shove, fight or flight, in the hospital. He'd never chosen flight before.

He still watches now, crystal clear in all of its blunt-force, sharp-edged horror.

He watches it play out like some sort of out of body experience, Tessa standing next to him, morbidly replaying it over and over again like he could change it somehow.

And he tries once, only to find the world flipped upside down for a brief second before it all came crashing back down, and his head pounded for hours. Heaven’s version of whiplash and a concussion.

It’s always playing in reflections and mirrors. He starts to hear the sound of the metal tearing instead of radio static. It’s become such background noise, flashes in his peripheral vision that it’s just a part of his life (death). As it should be, he supposes. Cause and effect.

Now, when he lets his guard down, it’s not an opening for the archangels to intrude, it’s an opening for Mary to enter the room. 

She glows with what he would have assumed was an angelic quality if he didn’t know better. But she’s above all this angel bullshit, she’s better than any of them. He’s watching the crash playing on the walls, shadows cast by lamplight while Mary makes her way around the room, humming quietly and dusting the shelves, cleaning as if she's trying to wash away the horror of his death scene. But she can’t. She’s not really there, and neither is the crash.

It’s all in his head and he can’t escape.

Even in death he's haunted and he finds it unbelievably unfair that as a ghost he's not the _haunter_ but the _hauntee_.

It's that sort of luck that killed him.

He's haunted by the semi hiding in every dark corner.

He's haunted by a grotesque caricature of Tessa whispering in his ear, _why did you listen to me you stupid boy?_

He's haunted by picturesque visions of his family, traveled in time and stuck in a loop from 20 years ago, before the misfortune struck. Intermittently tricking him into believing everything is okay.

But it isn’t okay and no longer has the chance to be. He might care a little too much. He thought it would be better once the angels were gone and done trying to persuade him. It’s not.

Perhaps the worst (best) of all, he's haunted by Castiel, Angel of the Lord. Or, he had been hauntied by Cas, until Dean banished him to the ends of the earth and beyond (for what it's worth).

It was the best he could do in the circumstances, his usual methodology not really having a place here. Hunt, kill. Not that he could ever bring himself to _kill_  Cas, of that he was certain.

But what is he supposed to do here with the things he doesn't understand that might want him dead?

Cas would never hurt him, he knows this, but his brothers and sisters did, and it was easier to lump them all together than to admit how much he wanted Cas around. (How much he needed Cas around. Didn’t know until it was too late.)

Because now he’s just talking to himself.

While Cas had been haunting him, the difference is that Cas is _real_. Living, breathing, whatever the hell it is that angels do. He'd been someone that answered Dean when he spoke, even if Dean hadn’t always liked what he said. Someone that he could have touched, if he’d wanted to (he tells himself he didn’t, that he doesn’t). It doesn’t matter anyway, now that Cas is gone and gone for good.

The books have gone from blasphemy to uncomfortably invasive, to something akin to his own handwritten diary, and with Cas gone he finds he has so much time on his hands, and he spends a lot of it reading. Makes it through season five. Slow at first, still skeptical until a few key words click into place, then all at once in an avalanche from a thousand foot tall brick wall crumbling into dust and settling between the pages, and dusting his cheeks, and filling his lungs.

He doesn’t think he could breathe anymore without it there; the moment he first inhaled it, it became a part of him. A life that he didn't live but could have lived, and in some alternate reality _did_ live.

It's becoming harder to dictate where the line is drawn between the two and it terrifies him. 

And now he's left here alone in his empty house, too big for one person, with all the dust from his old life, making him sneeze and reminding him that he'd told one of the only friends he's ever had in his life (death) to leave and never come back.

He regrets a lot of things.

"Cas?" It's only a whisper and his voice sounds like tin and it echoes around the empty room and bounces off the pristine walls, trying too hard to be perfect. 

He still doesn't understand prayer, and he gets what he expects: nothing. Only vaguely worth trying and he hates himself for the sentimentality.

If he could sleep it might quell his anxieties for an hour or two. Forget his latest fuck up, but as it stands, he's just waiting for the nightmares to manifest themselves in the guise of comfort with deceptive assurances that it will all work out in the end.

Well, he's already a fair bit past the end, and nothing has ever worked out for him. He might even entertain the thought of killing himself, if there were any point to it, if he didn't already know it wasn't worth the effort. 

Later, he thinks that maybe all those invisible painted symbols are like devil’s traps for angels. The books imply as much, they haven’t been wrong so far. He wills a few back into existence and scratches lines across to break them and calls again.

“Cas?"

Still no answer. There are symbols on everything, everywhere, and he could never get to them all, and he doesn’t try any harder than this because he’s not desperate (yet).

Then after a few more days he falls just a little bit further down the rabbit hole. He finishes the sixth season of books, and keeps going until -

Cas is dead. He needs to know that that’s not true _here_ , with the dividing lines between the worlds steadily slipping away, if they were ever even there at all.

So he tries praying a real goddamned prayer. He thinks he hears a _thud_ on the roof, creaking in the attic, but there’s nothing there when he searches. He’s hallucinating.

It stays nighttime for what feels like days, all the pie he finds in the kitchen is burnt and he gets in a fight with a memory of Sam from his high school days. 

It’s not fair that heaven is a reflection of his mood, it should be happy all the time, he thinks. To keep him in that space too. But it is the way it is, making his fingers twitch, trigger happy, but there’s nothing for him to do.

There’s still a trunkful of guns out in the Impala.

He considers tearing up all the floorboards to make some ground without sigils for Cas to stand on, even just one square foot, because he’s going crazy by himself, trapped alone in his own head.

He goes so far as to fetch a crowbar before he stops himself.

He goes for a swim in the lake to cool himself off. Leaves his clothes in a pile on the dock and swims naked because there’s no point in decency if it’s just him, always and forever.

Swimming helps, barely, calms him physically even if his mind is still racing. When he steps out of the water a wind rolls through. The tall grasses dance and the surface of the lake ripples. He shivers as the breeze breathes on his dampened skin. 

“Hello?"

It’s stupid. There’s no one there, but the breeze rolls again, stronger, and he scrambles for his clothes to cover himself and quickly shuffles back inside.

He keeps at the the seventh season of books, with the hope that Cas will make another appearance. Both book Dean and book Sam had died before and come back, always coming back, and his real self is _currently dead_  and still (kind of) kicking. Why not Cas as well?

Five books in and nothing. He means to put them down with the intent to never look back because he doesn’t know if he can take it. But he keeps going, with nothing else to do but foolishly cling to false hope.

He reads lying on the couch. He reads sitting on the dock with his feet dangling in the lake. He reads leaning up against the perpetually blooming peach tree in the yard, magically back in one piece after the storm. Why not.

He’s reading in the Impala when he finally reaches the words that get him moving again. 

_Cas is alive._

A little (a lot) worse for wear, but _alive_.

Even if these books have little (or nothing) to do with his current life (death), he can’t help but let it restore his faith, it surges through him, and before he knows what he’s doing he’s fitting the key into the ignition and gripping the wheel tight and he’s _gone_.

He drives as fast as his baby will go because there’s no point to slowing down. 

He’s missed this. The road. Some of the tension he’s been clinging to eases as he exhales, as he puts the miles behind him, like he’s leaving all his problems in the rearview mirror (if only). The wind streaming through the open windows and the hum of the engine. The _movement_. He wasn’t built to stay in once place for long. Why did he let himself get trapped in that house?

It takes as long as it takes for him to get there. There’s no willing it closer because it’s not something he’s made up or is remembering, it’s an actual physical _place_  (as much as anything that exists up here).

The tunnel.

The edge of his heaven.

He’s going to get out of here, or he’s going to drag Cas back, or - god _damn_ it, he doesn’t know, but it’s going to be something big.

At last his can see it looming up ahead. He means to drive straight through it, burst out the other side in a rage, but the closer he gets the more he can feel it’s sinister invitation, that mark on his arm starts burning, invisible thread tugging, and he decides against it.

He parks about twenty feet away, to allow himself breathing room. It’s barely enough, as he gets out of the car and leans against the hood and rethinks his only very loosely outlined plan. It seems like shit, now that he’s staring it down. A suicide mission. But does that matter?

“Hey, Cas, you out there?'

_Of course he’s not._

The darkness is pulsing from the tunnel and it may as well be laughing at him,just _daring_  him to walk forward so it can devour him. He’s almost stubborn enough to let it have him, but that’s not why he’s here.

The dark tunnel feels like it’s physically pulling him forward, or maybe it’s just sucking in the space that sits between him and it, shortening the distance. Eating the world between them until it’s close enough that he can almost reach out and touch it. 

A thick, heavy fog, settled between stone walls, with shadowy tendrils leaking out of the edges and grasping at the empty air. 

Dean takes a step forward, ignoring his heart beating rapidly in his chest.

The darkness pulses again, resonates a slow, steady hum, so low he almost can’t hear it, but he can feel it buzzing through his arm to his bones. He has to lean in. It’s hypnotic. It has to be a trap.

He shakes his head to clear it. Takes a deep breath and another step forward.

Heat radiates off the fog, like it could be smoke from some great eternally burning fire. He’s close enough now that the darkness is all that he can see, eating into even the farthest edges of his vision. Just blackness, forever.

And then, very faintly - and maybe just in his head, like so many things these days - for the briefest second, a flash of blue.

He takes one last step forward, lifts a hand and _reaches_.

It’s not smoke. It’s not hot, and he can’t feel the darkness at all except for that it’s _cold_ , like ice, biting and stinging. He reaches as far as he can without letting his body become engulfed by the darkness, not knowing what he’s reaching for, and not sure that he’d feel it anyway. Every second his arm grows colder and he’s losing sensation in his fingertips.

He knows it’s there more than he feels it, another hand gripping at his, weakly. His fingers are frozen to the bone, but with the last of his strength he clasps the hand as tight as he can, and he _pulls_.

 

/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\

 

Cas topples out of the darkness and crashes into him and they fall backward onto the hood of the Impala. They right themselves and Cas looks around wildly as if he doesn’t know where he is. And maybe he doesn’t, until his eyes fall on Dean.

“What did you do?” It’s rough, it’s almost angry, he’s not being fair. 

But Dean just shrugs, and then notices something else much more pressing than Cas' annoyance: smokey figures creeping out from the darkness behind him. Shapes that look like giant hands and arms grasping at the air and at nothing, but _searching_.

“Uh, get in the car, Cas."

Cas glances back behind him, following Dean’s gaze, and repeats, “ _What the hell did you do, Dean_?"

“I don’t know!” he spits out, half in, half out of the driver’s seat. “Just fucking get in the goddamn car."

But Cas doesn’t move, just stands there staring at the monstrosities trying to force their way through, eyes narrowed in contemplation, at hands in the darkness pushing against some invisible barrier, faces pressing against a film, mouths wide open and silently screaming. Wisps of darkness detaching like storm clouds and feathers falling instead of rain. Cas lifts a hand like he’s going to touch one that drifts near him.

“Cas!"

“I don’t think they can get through."

“Christ. I don’t care, Cas! It’s creeping me out, let’s go.”

“I don’t even think this is the archangels. Maybe it never was.” He touches one of the shadow feathers and it shrinks away from his touch and folds in on itself and into nothing.

“Shit, Cas. It doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“The windows, the storm, they spoke to me. It’s them.”

Cas shakes his head. “I’m not so sure anymore. Maybe in part that was them, but this - ” he nods to the darkness, then turns finally to face Dean “ - this feels different, independent of heaven.”

Dean shivers involuntarily, the words like a knife tracing the phantom scar. He chooses his words carefully; he’s manipulating, but not lying.

“Can we please just go home?"

Cas' expression softens but still he doesn’t move.

“Just get in the car, Cas,” Dean says.

He does, sparing another glance at the darkness as Dean starts to turn the car away.

“I’ve never seen this before,” he mutters, seemingly more to himself than anyone, “I thought… I don’t know what this is.”

“What, heaven doesn’t usually come with creepy back alley emergency exits?”

“No. There are doors, but not like that. Yours manifested as a road. They cycle through memories or significant locations but they don’t lead _out_. And I was - ” He twists in his seat, stares at Dean who watches him from the corner of his eye. “Where did you pull me from? I was - why do I – ” He looks down at his hands, for the thousandth time like they don’t belong to him, flexes his fingers. “Why do I feel _human_?”

They leave the nightmare of the tunnel behind them and drive a full night in silence, only intermittently uncomfortable between pockets of relief that flare up with the streetlights they pass, and then Cas finally works up the nerve to bring it up.

“You didn’t mean it."

“Mean what?” Dean grunts.

“When you told me to leave."

“I was mad at you."

“I don’t understand what I did."

"Because you don’t tell me _shit_ , Cas."

“I’ve never lied to you,” Cas insists stubbornly.

“That’s not what I said.” Dean sighs. “Look, Cas, can we just - "

“I only know what you know, Dean."

He doesn’t take his eyes off the dark road, but he feels Cas turn towards him, watching Dean closely as he starts to explain.

“I know what you know, and only as you remember it. I don’t know how it works, but I’ll be in the midst of my own business and suddenly I’ll remember something new. But it’s not the same as recalling a memory, it’s stronger somehow, like it's being woken up. I don’t really know how to describe it."

Dean clutches tighter on the steering wheel. “You don’t have to. I know what you mean."

“I didn’t live that other life any more than you did. And any knowledge I have outside of that is from this  timeline and I’ve told you all of it."

“Okay."

“There’s just not much to tell. I’m sorry."

Dean feels like he should be the one apologizing this time. “It’s okay, Cas."

“And now I feel like - ” Those hands again. “I don’t know why I always take the form of my vessel when I’m with you, when I don’t mean to, when I don’t need to, but now it actually feels like _me_.”

They’ve made it back to Memory Lane, the scattered favorites of his unending cross-country trek, all lined up too neatly.

Before letting himself think it through, he pulls the car over and starts to get out, Cas following warily, and they walk over to the Roadhouse for a drink to drown all this shit. The alcohol won’t have any real effect on either of them, but Dean’s banking on that placebo. It’s the thought that counts, the familiar coping mechanism.

Jo’s bouncing around with a little too much energy serving the ghost patrons that fill the bar. Ellen smiles warmly at them from behind the counter as they walk over, as if they’re all really there.

The beer she serves them is real enough, at any rate, and that’s why they’re here. And maybe a little bit for the atmosphere, although he’s never witnessed the real Roadhouse this packed. He’s mixing memories. 

Cas is eying all the ghosts curiously, like he doesn’t understand why they’re around. Dean’s family, in the house, makes sense to him, but not this.

“An empty bar is boring,” Dean says, and takes a sip of his beer.

Cas still acts unconvinced, but he reaches for his own drink, wrapping a hand around the glass without lifting it, and glaring at a couple of giggling ghost girls who are whispering and staring at the two of them.

“This is weird."

Dean shrugs. “You’re weird."

If they act normal maybe they’ll start to feel normal again.

They drink. The people watch, though it doesn’t have the same feel as it would in real life. The ghost patrons are faceless unless Dean looks directly at them and they’re speaking to each other but eavesdropping gets him nowhere, the speech too quiet, too rushed, and possibly in another language. 

The only people he recognizes are Ellen and Jo, possibly a couple of conquests from years gone by, but he’s not sure. He recalls something Sam told him once, that the brain cannot invent faces for dreams, that they’re all faces seen in real life. Maybe heaven is the same. Maybe they’re all people he’s seen on the road. Maybe they’re people he’s saved. Maybe they’re people he’s gotten killed.

Even with all that, sitting at the Roadhouse does start to feel normal, like life, more than anything has in a long time. He finishes his beer, Ellen brings him another and he turns to Cas to try yet again, because even though he’s good at giving up, with this he can’t seem to let go.

“So did I break it?"

Cas has barely touched his drink. “Break what?"

“Whatever spell you did to keep them out.” _And keep you out_ , he doesn’t add.

“I don’t know. Probably, or I couldn’t be here, but they didn’t follow so I can’t say for sure.”

“So, we might be back to square one."

Cas shakes his head. “I wouldn’t go that far. If they were able to get through they would be here by now, and besides – ” His face breaks out into a grin. It’s nothing huge, but it’s more than Dean has seen on him so far, and it makes him smile too, even if he doesn’t know what Cas is about to say. 

“I think you’ve humiliated them."

Dean huffs a quick laugh. “Sounds like you’re saying they’ve given up."

“I think they may have. You’ve defeated them multiple times in both timelines, which they’re aware of, and I don’t think they’re going to try again unless they know for certain they’ll win. And from what I can tell, they _can’t_."

Dean grins and claps him on the shoulder. “My heaven, my rules. I’ll drink to that.” He lifts his glass and motions for Cas to do the same.

He does, but - “It doesn’t work that way, Dean."

“Oh come on, Cas. Just let me have this. Cheers?"

“Cheers."

 

/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\

 

Sam graduates from law school and gets a job at some swanky law firm. The general _corporateness_  of it makes Dean cringe but Sam’s down there reveling in it, so he lets it slide.

And Dean also lets slide his newfound knowledge that this means he's been dead for _years_. It doesn’t feel like years. It feels like barely one year, but there Sam is, so far ahead in life, and god, Dean’s missed so much.

He’s thinking about time while watching Sam work, a real life adult and not the little kid he so fondly prefers to remember him as, and he starts sliding backwards. Wishing they were both kids again, wishing there was no obligation. Wishing he could be alive down there to shake Sam’s hand and congratulate him, just once. Tell him he’s proud of him.

Then he catches Sam in a familiar eye roll. All of a sudden it’s hilarious, when he realizes that what Sam is so intently working on is not a case like a _lawyer case,_ but an actual case like their kind of thing because the building he’s working in is haunted.

Three guilty defendants who were acquitted in the past month have turned up dead, and it looks like it has something to do with a couple of antique paintings recently acquired to decorate the lobby. 

An easy case which only takes Sam two days to set right and then it’s back to suits and courtrooms and dinner dates. 

Yeah, there’s a girl involved. It appears she works at the elementary school on the other side of town, teaching third grade, and they met when Sam helped her brother out of a sticky financial situation.

In other news, Jo and Ellen are still alive and well, no apocalypse for which they had to sacrifice themselves to stop it, and Bobby is as reclusive as ever in Sioux Falls, with no Leviathan around to shoot him.

That’s… well, those are really the only people he knows, right?

He almost wants to check in on Lisa and Ben, but he doesn’t. His time with them (except that first weekend with Lisa) was strictly in the other timeline, so he stays away, even if it all feels like one timeline these days. 

He stays away from a lot of things, memories, because it’s easier than dealing with them. But some still sneak up on him anyway.

He keeps watching the lake movies instead of going back to reading the books, but finds he can only be out there for so long before getting fidgety. He needs something to do with his hands while he sits, however small, so he devises a plan and hangs a sign on the door as he leaves because he thinks he’s funny.

_Gone fishing._

There hasn’t been so much as a nibble on the hook for the better part of an hour, but he isn’t bothered in the slightest. It’s still relaxing being out here watching a permanent sunrise glittering gold on the lake, and his feet hanging off the dock, toes dipping just barely in to the cool water.

He’s got a fishing rod in one hand, an ice cold beer in the other, and a faint reflected view on the lake surface of Sam down on earth, walking through a park with his girlfriend. In this moment at least, life (death) is good.

Slow, and peaceful, and quiet, and - 

“What are you doing?"

And Cas, apparently, and it’s a good thing Dean’s gotten over jumping at his stealthy appearances or his beer would be bobbing in the lake right now.

“I’m fishing,” he states without taking his eyes off the water. “What does it look like I’m doing?"

“It looks like you’re doing nothing."

Dean scoffs, but - “Okay yeah, I’ll give you that, but what do you call this?” he asks, indicating the fishing pole and twisting around to glare up at him.

Cas' eyes fall on the rod, clearly for the first time, and widen in surprise. “A fishing pole."

“Ding ding ding.” And he turns back to the lake. 

Cas is silent for a moment, and then. “Do I win a prize?"

And Dean can’t help but laugh at that, assuming he is in fact joking, but it’s always so hard to tell.

"You win the knowledge that you’re not blind, just oblivious.” 

“Am I… being insulted?"

“Nah, man.” He shrugs, maybe it did come out a little sharper than he meant it. “I just wasn’t expecting company is all."

“Oh.” And he can hear the dock creak as Cas takes a step back. “I’ll just - "

Instead, Dean scoots over a bit and pats the dock beside him. “Too late now.” And he smiles over at Cas as he takes a seat.

“Is this what you do now when I’m not here?” He asks.

“What did you expect?”

No answer.

“What do _you_  do when you’re not following me around?"

Again, Cas doesn’t dignify him with a response, and when Dean looks over at him ready to seriously inquire about his whereabouts, he stops short and bursts out laughing instead, when he realizes just how ridiculous Cas looks, sitting stiffly on the edge of the dock, uncomfortable and out of place in his suit and trench coat combo. 

“You look ridiculous, Cas."

“Okay, now I’m being insulted.” 

His face is scrunched with worry because he clearly has no idea what he’s done to deserve this treatment, but Dean just leans over and nudges his shoulder with his own.

“Again, not really. You just look like some sort of businessman reluctantly forced out on a nature retreat with his office on pain of being fired."

“Oh.” Cas just frowns and looks down at his feet, and Dean laughs again when he notices the toes of his dress shoes beneath the water.

In contrast, Dean’s barefoot, with his jeans rolled up around his calves and wearing a faded vintage Zeppelin t-shirt that he would have killed to have owned while alive.

“At least take off your shoes, Cas. And the coat, and the suit jacket, and for god’s sake, the _tie._  Relax a little."

For a moment, Cas hesitates, still eyeing Dean warily, trying to decide whether or not he's supposed to be offended, but then he complies, starting by peeling off the double layer of jackets, then tie, then shoes and socks, and he piles them all on the dock behind him. 

“Feel better?” Dean asks.

Cas nods, but then with another glance at Dean’s attire compared to his own he takes it one step farther, down to the thin white t-shirt he’s got under his button up. 

The black slacks are still a little fancy for fishing but with just those and a t-shirt he doesn’t look so comically out of place. He swings his feet in the water, hem of his pants getting wet but he doesn’t seem to mind. The light form the sunrise is glowing on his tanned skin, and Dean doesn’t even know how it can be tan when it’s usually buried beneath multiple layers of clothing. But heaven, angels, they play by different rules, none of this is real anyway. Even more apparent, with Cas squinting into the sunset and splashing the water a bit with his feet like some kid who’s never been to a lake before. 

Then he leans back on his hands and glances over at Dean, who suddenly realizes he’s been staring this whole time, and Cas narrows his eyes again and asks, “What now?"

“No, I uh - you look - very human."

“Again, it sounds like - "

“I’m not insulting you! Jesus. It’s a good look. I’ve never really seen you without the whole getup, and stripped down you look - "

Good, less intimidating, human. He knows that may not sound like a good thing to an angel, but he means it well, even if he doesn’t have a better way of putting it, so he doesn’t finish the sentence. 

Dean is reminded of their conversation in the Impala, not long ago, when Cas said he _felt_ human, but the feeling must have faded, because Cas doesn’t really look like he follows what Dean is trying to say, but seems to get it’s coming from a good place, so he nods, says _thank you_  a little too sincerely and stares back out over the lake. 

If Dean didn’t know better he would say that Cas looks like he's trying to contemplate the meaning of life and everything in it. He's staring directly into the sun, with his eyes narrowed ever so slightly in concentration like he's trying to read something just barely out of focus. But there’s no need for Castiel, Angel of the Lord, to contemplate anything, because he already knows. Angelic privilege. 

Dean makes a mental note to ask him about it one day and then immediately erases it, because on the off chance that there is no meaning or that it’s something he doesn’t agree with, he’d rather not know. 

Even if he looks no more human than Dean himself, in Cas' case, it’s just a costume. Any human would be blinded, staring into the sun for so long, but Cas doesn’t even seem aware that something like a pretty view could be harmful, and why should he? Instead of the light glinting off his eyes, the blue just seems to swallow it up, because deep down, Cas is made of light and stars and all sorts of other incorporeal _ideas_  and lifetimes instead of mere flesh and bone. His skin is nothing more than a cage to keep all that magnificence locked inside and out of sight from the worthless humans who couldn’t look upon him without convulsing. 

All common sense implies he should be bursting at the seams, but instead he looks soft and warm and settled, like he could be real.

He _might_  be real, and at least he has the decency not to mention that Dean’s been staring for several minutes, but Dean realizes his mistake, and swallows down his insignificance and tries not to hyperventilate, letting his reverie be broken by a tug on the end of his fishing line. He’d almost forgotten what he was here for.

He whips his head back around towards the lake in time to watch the ripple expand outwards from where the bobber floats in the water, but there’s no second tug, a false alarm. 

Shoulders slumped in disappointment, he forces himself to keep his gaze fixed on the bobber instead of letting them flicker back over to Cas. He fumbles for his forgotten beer and takes a sip, and then another, and then a few more until he relaxes back into the game.

And before long Cas eases out of his own concentration and starts again to swing his feet in the water, slowly at first, and then enough to make a small splash.

“Quit it, man. You’re going to scare away all the fish."

Cas gives a sort of noncommittal grunt, but stills.

“Why are you fishing?” 

“I was bored."

He kicks the water again, making another splash.

“And this is… fun?"

And here he’s been thinking that Cas has been enjoying himself, basking in the sunrise with a side of existential insight, and content in Dean’s (admittedly not very enticing) company, when in fact he was just bored, kicking up water like a petulant child. 

So much for giving him credit as an all-knowing, grand, celestial being.

“Jesus, Cas."

This had always been Sam’s reaction to fishing, like it's some sort of creative torture masked as recreation. 

Somewhere down the lake shore, in his periphery, Dean can see the two of them, as kids, one of the few times John tried to take them out fishing, thinking it would quell the complaints that they were never allowed to do anything fun. Dean appreciated the gesture even if Sam didn’t. And John made it worse by ditching them anyway, leaving Dean to teach him how it worked.

Sam quickly became a lost cause, but Cas? Fresh faced and (in the other timeline) misty-eyed at any chance to understand the human experience? Dean can work with that.

Or, no harm in trying, at least, for they have all the time in the world to waste.

But Cas still looks extremely skeptical and Dean just rolls his eyes. “Well, _you’re_  not currently doing anything. How about you give it a real chance?"

“Whatever you think is best, Dean."

Dean ignores the mocking tone and reaches behind him to grab a second fishing pole. It wasn’t there a moment ago, but Dean’s been practicing, and he’s gotten much better at the whole _heaven manipulation_  thing. Sometimes, memories are still hard to control (he didn't _intend_ for kid versions of himself and Sam to start fishing ten yards from where he sits). Memories are tricky, based in emotion rather than rational thought, and while he could usually will them there and away, (he hates to admit) they sometimes get the better of him.

Objects, however, are a piece of cake, because they have no basis in the tumultuous state of his psyche.

He hands the pole to Cas and starts to explain (in time with ghost Dean’s explanation to Sam) just _how_ and _why_ they’re fishing. 

Sometime since their reunion at the tunnel and the drinks at the Roadhouse, he and Cas silently agreed that they are in fact friends. Because they know that they were (that they are) even if they’d been thrown into this mess together without knowing the history. They’re still piecing it together, still tiptoeing around strange facts that they know but shouldn’t know, still going in a few circles. But they’ve agreed to no longer be at odds, to play nice until it’s no longer playing. 

And it’s been working.

What is _not_ working, however, is Cas' attempt to fish. He’s having trouble releasing the catch at the proper moment and casting. He loses patience and reels in in under a minute. It’s just so outside of his heavenly existence, apparently, that he can’t grasp the concept. 

“Jesus, Cas. You stood watch on earth for hundreds of years, and now you can’t sit still and wait for ten minutes."

“Fishing for food, I understand, but for sport, I don’t really see the point."

“Did I say we _weren’t_  going to eat the fish?"

He hadn’t actually been planning on it, but why not? He can feel the skeleton of plan forming, and it might be a little too much, but - 

“I’m guessing you’ve never been camping either?"

“What."

“Yeah, that’s what I thought."

“Why would you sleep outside when your house is right there? You don’t even sleep."

The thing is that Dean knows Cas is right, especially because he’s dead and this is heaven and nothing really matters, except that’s exactly why he wants to hold on to it all so badly.

Because it’s such a human thing to do, and while Cas is acting more human these days, Dean is feeling less so.

Fishing, camping, both activities undeniably human. Not only for the fact that it is something done recreationally, a hobby, but because at its core, before the advent of modern conveniences, it's about survival. The basic human need to eat, to sleep. Food and shelter. Blah blah blah, whatever, it doesn’t matter.

As a ghost, Dean doesn’t have the need of either and yet he has both in infinite supply. While he was alive there was always the possibility of skipping dinner, of sleeping crunched up in the backseat of the Impala, and in the old days, he’d had to try to turn sleeping in the woods into a game to fool Sam into not hating it.

Though it may not have been glamorous, it was his life, and part of him feels that if he can convince Cas it’s okay, he can convince himself that it really was okay.

He doesn’t try to explain the reason to Cas, who is staring hopelessly out over the water, un-cast fishing rod held loosely in his hands. He moves as if he’s going to try again to cast it, but thinks better of it and just shifts the pole to his other hand. 

“Natural lake water isn’t this blue,” Cas says after a while.

“Yeah, well, if I wanted to I could make it purple,” Dean chides. Except he doesn’t want it to be purple. When he first got here the lake looked like a typical Midwestern lake, dark and green, but over time slowly, steadily, unconsciously, it shifted to this very precise shade of blue, which he seems to see everywhere. Originating from one specific place.

Cas looks over to catch his eye, and Dean looks away and clears his throat. “How about you go set up the tent and I’ll take care of the fish."

“What tent?"

“Over by the trees, Cas, just go look."

He goes and completely misses the point by setting up the tents with some angel magic instead of several frustrating attempts with his hands. Dean quits his game, and wills a couple of make-believe fish to succumb to the irresistible pull of his lure. He and Cas cook them up over a campfire.

“Having fun yet?"

Cas nods, but Dean doesn’t believe it.

As the sun starts to set, Dean says, “Now this is the part where, traditionally, we should start telling ghost stories, but that kind of loses its appeal in my line of work. I’m sure you can imagine, so forgive me if we skip it. You better bet we’re doing s’mores, though."

Memories of him and Sam doing just that are playing out down near the lake, where they’d been fishing before, while Cas proves incapable of roasting a marshmallow without setting it on fire. Dean assures him that’s the best way to go, but Cas still seems distressed until he finally takes a bite of the completed treat and breaks out in to a grin. 

“I like these."

They each make and eat several, and laugh at ten year old Sam whining about a stomachache because he ate three plus an additional five marshmallows.

Because neither of them have any need to sleep, Dean decides to forgo the tent and the sleeping bags altogether, and just sprawls out on the grass near the fire, soaking in the warmth in contrast to the cooling air, and breathing in the scent of smokey wood and burnt marshmallows.

Cas lays down beside him, as Dean tires to spot constellations in the sky, and even though he knows where they should be he can’t find them.

“Shit. You guys got different stars up here or something, Cas?"

“They’re backwards,” he says.

Dean glances over at him, lying too close and gazing at the sky. “What?"

“Backwards. Look.” He points. “Orion."

Dean follows the path and - “Oh. That’s weird. I hadn’t noticed."

Cas lets his hand fall back down into the space between them, and when it lands he misjudges and then their arms are just barely touching. Cas doesn’t seem to notice, but the instant the contact is made, Dean can feel heat on his shoulder, a gentle buzzing on his skin, which he knows (from the books) takes the shape of a handprint. It’s been happening for a while now, whenever they touch, no matter how briefly or innocently, but he doesn’t think Cas realizes. It’s strangely comforting and it drowns out that different kind of phantom itch that plagues his right arm. He can’t feel it at all with the handprint buzzing. 

He squints up at the stars and finds another backwards constellation. “Is it… is it something I did, messing around with this place, because - hey, what - ” He feels Cas start to laugh before he hears the quiet sound. “Don’t laugh at me, asshole."

“You didn’t change the stars, Dean. It’s not possible."

Dean grumbles something unintelligible and the only reason he doesn’t sit up or roll away is so he doesn’t lose that contact.

“The stars are a constant in the universe, but heaven exists on a different plane than Earth. From here, the stars appear mirrored."

“Oh."

Before long he’s found all the constellations he knows, a few more with help from Cas, and though he doesn’t quite know how it happens, they’re somehow lying with their arms pressed completely together, shoulder to wrist. Dean holds his hand in a loose fist, and Cas has his palm flat on the grass.

Dean thinks he could actually fall asleep like this, if heaven’s stupid rules didn’t dictate it impossible. To compromise, neither of them move for a week.

 

/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\

 

They bake a pie, instead of eating a magically appearing one. While certainly more fun, it’s made even better when Dean realizes that they won’t have to clean up after they’re done. 

It occurs to Cas that they won’t have to wait the full time for it cook, either, but Dean insists that they do wait, let it bake while the scent fills the whole house, and the anticipation builds. It’s half the fun of baking, after all.

While they wait in the living room, Dean picks up the assortment of _Supernatural_ books that he’s left scattered about the room and returns them to the shelves. He’s read over one hundred of them now. 

“I think I was in love with you.” He says it kind offhand and kind of as a joke but kind of also completely serious, testing the waters.

“In the other timeline,” Cas clarifies.

“Yeah."

And because he can no longer stand to look him in the eye, Dean goes back to tidying the shelves, putting the series back in order and the whole time he can feel Cas' eyes on his back, never straying. He expected as much, kind of why he said it, but god _why did he say it_. Close as he’s ever gotten to saying those words to anyone and it wasn’t even real and he couldn’t even say why, for sure, he’d said it. Except it had happened _then_  and like with everything in Edlund’s books he knew it had been true, was true. Or that it _would be_ true, but the timing is all wrong. 

Dean is dead, and Cas can’t stay in the same goddamn place for more than five minutes, now or  _then_ , and there's just so much missing. He can feel it every time he reads the books, and sees every time Cas opens his mouth to speak that he’s holding back, choosing his words too carefully.

Cas' eyes are still on him, going strong, and Dean feels like he has to say something else. He doesn't want to and he wants to, and he knows which side will win if he gives himself any time to think about it, so instead he turns around and says, “Were you -"

But as soon as Cas hears the first sound his eyes double in size, then the air ripples and he's gone before the sentence ends, and Dean’s words fall into the empty room.

“ - in love with me?"

**/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\**

 

He eats to whole homemade pie himself and he doesn’t see Cas for a week. Of course he can’t really measure the time but it feels like a week. Or two.

Instead, he gets a different visitor from his past. And a swimming pool replaces the lake in the backyard.

It’s the swimming pool from a motel in Colorado where he spent a summer when he was seventeen. The first of three times he’d fallen in love (if he’s to count Cas, and he thinks he does).

The second of course was Cassie Robinson and he got a good reminder of that from the books (if not the first time they met) but this was something else, far enough back that it didn’t make the edit.

He and Sam had been cooped up in a tiny motel room, while John wandered off to adjacent towns to hunt on his own, and Ethan was the boy staying in the room two doors down, which just so happened to be haunted.

Of course it would be. Dean saw the signs and rushed in to save the day, almost too late, and Ethan thanked him with an almost too tight hug and a kiss on the cheek that made Dean’s face heat and his stomach flip over and not at all in a bad way.

It was nothing, at first. They were friends, and they’d talked a few times before the ghost incident, played games in the pool with the other kids. But afterwards they were something like inseparable. Best friends, maybe (a concept completely foreign to Dean, who wasn’t entirely sure he’d really even had a friend before).

So while Sam kept himself busy swimming or visiting the library down the street, Dean kept himself busy getting to know Ethan. The boy who’d run away from home and was staying in this cheap motel until his money ran out and he had to move to his car or maybe somehow something better would come along. He was taking a break from life, and Dean understood the feeling.

Dean found that flirting with boys made him more flustered than flirting with girls. (To this day he doesn’t know why. Less practice, maybe, there hasn’t been a lot.)

The first time Ethan tried to kiss him for real Dean panicked and Ethan backed off (sweet and unexpected) until Dean made a move, days later. Needless to say, they spent a significant portion of the rest of the summer holed up in Ethan’s room making out. Until Sam almost caught them once. Or twice. Okay, maybe there were quite a few close calls, so they moved the show to Ethan’s car, parked around the corner and out of sight. They even got so bold as to trade a few hand jobs in the backseat.

(Don’t think he was trying to keep secrets from Sam, in fact he's fairly certain Sam knew even though they’d never talked about it. But there are some things best kept private.)

September loomed. John made an appearance to tell them they’d be moving on, finding a new school. Ethan’s money was dwindling.

If there was any way that it could have worked Dean would have asked Ethan to come with them, at least for a little while. He already knew about ghosts (and Dean had shared some other stories) but it didn’t really make a difference. 

In the end, Ethan was the brave one when he asked Dean to run away with him, but Dean couldn’t leave his family the way that Ethan had left his. No matter how fucked up his life was. 

So Ethan told Dean he loved him, and Dean told Ethan he’d miss him, and they said goodbye.

He hasn’t thought of Ethan in years, and now the memory of him is swimming in the phantom swimming pool in the yard.

Life doesn’t flash before your eyes when you die. Not until after death has claimed you, and it doesn’t flash, it _lingers_ , and nothing gets past. Some sort of post-death therapy and he’s not sure he understands death’s process.

Dean doesn't know why Cas pretends that conversation never happened when he finally returns, but he lets it go. For now. It doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter that Cas doesn’t acknowledge it, because Dean hasn’t stopped reading, whenever he gets the chance, when he’s not wasting time with Cas. He makes it to the end of season eight not long after the confession. 

It doesn’t matter that Cas didn’t say it then, or now, because Dean knows anyway.

Because in that other timeline he broke Cas out of Naomi’s mind control with a simple half-truth.

 _I need you_. 

Mostly, he tells himself it’s okay that Cas didn’t say it, because at least he didn’t say he _wasn’t_ in love with him.

 

/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\

 

Sammy has a kid. He got married, and he has a newborn rocking in a crib and Dean _missed all of it_.

He was too wrapped up in his own bullshit life (death) to notice, too distracted by his stupid high school-esqe angst. _Does Cas like-like me?_  Clearly, he doesn’t, or he wouldn’t have let Dean _miss something so big_. 

For a moment he lets himself believe all is well and good with his being dead, but he’s wrong. He’s proud of the life Sam’s made for himself, and not for the first time Dean just wishes he was still around to tell him that. It feels like he’s failed Sam by not being around to help.

He watches Sam and the wife put the baby girl to sleep. Dean feels like he’s lost something but he doesn’t know what or why or how, but his own empty house makes him angry.

He tries to drown his bad mood in whiskey, knowing damn well, as usual, that it won’t have the desired effect. No drunks in heaven.

"Aren't you happy for him?” Cas asks.

"Of course I'm happy for him."

"But _you're_ not happy".

"No, Cas, I'm not, I'm dead and I'm missing everything, and my life was a fucking joke. Just look at Sam and what he made for himself. I can’t be a part of his life anymore, I’ll never get to meet his wife or get to know my niece. Why can't I - "

Cas stays silent until he calms down. Sits in the chair opposite him and stares in his usual fashion, and only when it becomes clear that Dean would not be the one to break the silence, he speaks.

"Heaven is supposed to make you happy."

Dean smiles but it isn't really a smile. “I don’t think it’s working.”

Cas knows better than to reply.

"I'm not supposed to be here, Cas." His eyes flicker over to the endless shelf of Edlund books. "I should still be kicking it, or I should be wasting away in the pit. I feel like this is some second chance at a happy ending that was neither asked for nor deserved.” His arm burns, twitches, he tires to ignore it. “If I have to be dead I'd rather just be dead, and none of this... whatever this is."

"You're not being fair."

"The hell I'm not. It’s too hard, Cas."

**/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\**

 

There’s nothing here for him now. Absolutely nothing, because the thought of replaying the same handful of moments over and over and over for all eternity makes his skin crawl and anger boil up inside of him because he isn’t meant for this, isn’t supposed to be here, and it’s not fair.

He fucking screams his lungs out at memory-Sam and memory-mom -  _I’m right here, goddamn it, look at me_ \- and they never respond or react or acknowledge him any different than any of the other five hundred times the scenario has played out. Yeah, they’re good memories, but this could almost be hell, having to force himself through the same broken record countless times. He doesn’t want his greatest hits because that just means there’s nothing more to come and that thought alone would kill him if he wasn’t already dead.

Sometimes it helps to scream at memory-John, but only because the guy could be horrible sometimes, even in some of these good memories now that Dean's seeing them without the clouded veil of childhood. But the yelling gets old when John won’t yell back, and if any one would snap out of the pattern it would be him, especially some of the insults thrown his way. Some of the things Dean's admitting to John would never approve of in a million years. So Dean tries to hit him instead to provoke response but his hand goes right through him. Dean is a ghost.

No, that’s not entirely right. John is the ghost. It's unclear and sometimes feels like it's Dean but it doesn't really matter because the fact remains that they’re both dead.

And poor unsuspecting Cas, ever the master of less-than-perfect timing finds himself on the receiving end of more than one of those punches. Because Dean has anger management issues, he knows that even if he doesn't want to admit it, and after years of going after big bads, he’s gotten used to having something to hit. And even if he could replay those fights it isn't the same. He needs something _real,_ with resistance, because that invisible scar on his arm won’t hurt if his knuckles do.

And Cas is the closest thing to real up here. 

So Dean will be in a mood and Cas will pop up and then _wham._  Dean feels bad about it. He does. But it’s not enough to stop him, because Cas lets him do it. Sometimes he’ll duck and he’ll dodge or he’ll just vanish, which only makes it worse, but at least it’s a _reaction_. And sometimes he’ll indulge Dean, block the hits so at least there’s contact, maybe even let him land one or two which is a fucking miracle even if it is handed to him on a silver platter.

He can’t actually hurt Cas, physically at least, some sort of angelic mojo that Dean knows nothing about. But sometimes that light in his eyes goes dim when Dean’s rearing for a hit, arm already pulled back, and that’s why Dean feels bad. 

Because he loves that ridiculous blue, in all its glory. Holds onto the color, always, like a warm coat to wrap around him whenever he gets cold. And he doesn’t want anything to happen to it, especially something he’s the reason for. 

But he’s already swinging, already headed down that warpath. An object in motion will stay in motion.

Unstoppable force meets immovable object, and it’s a little surprising that the whole universe doesn’t implode, but really nothing in his life (death) has ever made sense, so why start now.

Bring on the fucking paradoxes. 

And somehow he’s standing with his fist against Cas' chest, frozen there, but he can still feel his blood pumping through his arm at an abnormally fast pace (why is it even flowing if he’s dead?) and he’s not moving how he wants to be moving. Not so unstoppable after all, this time, as his hand relaxes, fingers spreading over the space where Cas' heart should be, but there’s no heartbeat. 

They’re not the same, though, even if Cas may take a human form when he appears to him. He’s always reminding himself of this, that Cas isn’t just some guy but a freaking Angel of the Lord, the whole world for his taking if he wants it. Everything so small in his hands. Dean is nothing next to this. Cas could be anything, anywhere, fleeting in and out of corporeal existence, while Dean sits in his stupid house and sulks.

Cas might be real, but he isn’t human, doesn’t have a heartbeat. There’s warmth, and Dean can feel it radiating out from beneath the fabric of his shirt, where his palm is still pressed. And there's fluttering, like wings, nothing similar to the butterflies in Dean's own stomach, but big, slow, and powerful.

And he’s just looking at Cas, caught in the blue and he might be drowning. His eyes, but not _his_ eyes. And Dean can see the words that start to form on his tongue, hear them even before he says them, letting them hang heavy and lingering in the space between them.

“I’m sorry."

And whatever moment they’d been having is over. It’s fucking over because the one thing Dean has never wanted is sympathy. He wants a lot - so goddamn much - but sympathy is all he gets.

“Yeah, whatever.” And he lets his hand drop, all that energy that was coursing through him dissipates into absolutely nothing, just as those words have turned into nothing. 

 _I’m sorry_. Because he’s said them so many times since they met, even if the sentiment still rings true, they’re hollow in Dean’s ears. Hollow and echoing as he turns away and starts to walk. They were in his living room but it shifts as he moves and now they’re back on the road, no house in sight. Too stifling to have the walls around him. He needs the air and the sky so he can breathe again. And he needs the road to take him anywhere but here. 

“Dean, wait.” 

But he doesn’t.

“Please."

He falters, because he’s not sure he’s ever heard Cas say please before. Maybe. Not sure he’s said it, even now. So quiet it could just be the wind, but then he feels the air move behind him in that distinct way that he knows is not the wind, and then Cas reaches out and has a hand gripping his shoulder, and Dean stops walking.

His skin is humming beneath his hand, despite the intervening layer of cloth. And it’s burning, stinging, in the shape of his hand, where the handprint was in that other time, he _knows_ , but he doesn’t think about it. He can’t decide if it’s the best feeling or the worst.

Then when he doesn’t turn around, Cas drops his hand and the decision is made for him, when the feeling stops and his arm starts aching. He wants it back, but he can’t do anything, say anything about it, because minutes ago he was trying to hurt the guy and the one-eighty makes his head spin. 

He keeps walking, and he can hear Cas talking, voice fading as Dean tries to put miles between them and he’s not listening anyway. But Cas just won’t _shut up_ , so Dean spins around and says exactly what it is that’s been running around his head.

“There’s nothing here, Cas! Just me trapped alone in my head, and if you knew anything about what it’s like up there then you would know I’m going crazy."

"I do know."

“Yeah, right - "

“And you’re not alone."

“Memories don’t count for shit."

“What about me?” He says it too quietly.

“You - you’re barely real, just because you are more than some doesn’t mean - "

Cas takes a step forward, and even though he was some twenty feet away he closes the distance in that one step, appearing inches from Dean when his foot lands, and he settles as Dean fails trying not to flinch.

Cas flies, but he walks, always like he’s caught in some limbo between angel and human, like he’s forgotten which one he really is, or hasn’t decided which he wants to be, and that just makes it harder. Harder for Dean to remember he’s _not_ human, harder to let himself hold on to him, harder to - 

“Why are you even here, Cas? You never really told me."

He’s definitely drowning in the blue this time, it’s all he can see, so close to his own eyes.

“You never asked."

“So this is also my fault."

Cas throws him an exasperated look but otherwise says nothing and Dean resists the urge to shout _well I’m fucking asking now_  because in his head that sounds like begging and Dean does not beg.

“You got to give me something, Cas.” His voice breaks, and okay, maybe he does beg (a little).

“There is something I never told you. In the other timeline."

“Goddamn it, I don’t care about then -" He does, because it’s all the same now anyway.

“I never told you because I was afraid you would… find a way to shut me out. But I could hear you, every time you prayed to me, and sometimes even when you weren’t praying, if you were just… if you had enough…"

He trails off, but it doesn’t matter.

“Why didn’t you tell me you knew?"

“I know you, Dean, better than you realize, and you never would have let me finish even one sentence. Nothing would have happened."

He’s right, of course.

“Well.” It's harder than he thought. “I’m listening now, aren’t I?” The words almost get lost in the sound of the breeze and the crickets and the buzzing of flies. But Cas is _right there_  in front of him, and Dean knows now that even if he were a mile away he’d still hear.

“Yes, but you’re not the same person."

“That sounds like an insult.” And this is when he can’t take it anymore, takes a step back and starts to turn away, part of him wanting Cas to stop him and part of him, well, still wanting that but stubbornly refusing to admit it because he’s not that guy. 

“Not at all. Our experiences shape who we are, Dean, and I know you hate it here and I’m sor-” He cuts off at Dean’s glare, and redirects before he can slug him. “But I think that everything has worked out for the better. You may hate what’s happened to you, but you don’t hate yourself."

“I never - I don’t - " He turns away for real now, because he can’t say this if he’s looking him in the eyes, that _fucking_  blue. “I still don’t think I like myself."

“Dean - "

He can’t hear whatever it is he’s going to say, so he whips back around. “Can you still read my mind?"

“I don’t _read minds_ , I - "

“Hear me, whatever, can you?"

He hesitates, but - “Yes."

Dean wipes a hand over his face. “I feel violated.” 

“I can only hear what you want me to hear, on some level, even if you don’t always realize I’m listening."

“Goddamn it, Cas, that doesn’t make me feel any better, because that’s not how it works. That's an invasion of privacy. If I don’t tell you something it’s because I don’t actually want you to know."

For all the effort Dean put into move, leave, run, get the hell away, they’re still standing so close, not sure who’s responsible because he doesn’t remember either of them moving, yet here they are.

“Why don’t you want me to know?"

It’s gravity, like satellites revolving and it all has to be perfect or they’ll crash and it’ll all go up in flames, getting sucked into the void, and no one will remember the tragedy because there won’t be anyone left.

He thinks it has to be a tragedy. Someone’s already written that rule for him, though maybe he’s a fool to believe it. 

He has no control over his hands anymore, no rational thought left because Cas knows all those things he could never confess, and it angers him beyond comprehensible belief, but the knowledge that Cas heard those (silent) professions and didn’t run screaming washes over him in waves of wild relief. He has no control over his hands, he just moves, desperately reaches, wants (needs) to feel Cas against him.

He’s running his hands along fevered, sun-kissed skin, but it’s Cas, and he knows that the sun is burning within him, not above. It’s his skin, but it’s not really him. The sky is dark anyway, but he can’t be bothered to notice, and then all at once they’re not even outside anymore, but back in his house, in his room, crashing onto the bed.

They’d been leading up to this moment, too slowly, because neither of them knew how to bridge the gap and with two timelines running in their heads it was hard to know when the time was rightwhen all the timing was wrong. Maybe they hadn’t needed to wait.

Secrets are being traced across his chest, his stomach, by fingertips, lips, tongue, whispered prayers and disjointed worship, in languages he'll never know. Both of them crying out in meaningless sounds.

“ _Dean.”_ Murmured against his skin.

It’s more than he could have asked for and more than he deserves, but Cas doesn’t seem to realize it. Just kisses Dean harder like he’s afraid he’ll disappear, slower like he’s afraid the moment will end to soon - thoughts they share.

“Cas, _please_."


	4. PART FOUR

Here begins a new routine that Dean thinks he could easily get used to, except as soon as he lets himself think that, his newfound happiness comes back to bite him in the ass (and _not_  in that more literal way that he’s come to like).

For a while, it’s good. For a while almost anything can be good and it all has to do with that tendency for change, which he would have thought he could avoid in heaven’s (apparently falsely) advertised eternal paradise. Turned out to be pretty lackluster and just as tumultuous as life had been.

Just because he’s used to something doesn’t mean he has to enjoy it. Sad to say, he’s just figuring this out. 

But he breathes in blue for a while and it’s sweeter than he ever thought it could be.

A typical honeymoon phase with the oh-so-hopeful possibility that it’s _not_ phase, because they don’t have real lives to get back to. Or, Dean doesn't at least. 

They have a lot of lost time to make up for, no matter what timeline they’re in.

Cas doesn’t bother with his extra layers of clothing anymore, just his t-shirt and slacks, because they’re so often being pulled off of him, and the trench coat has become a permanent fixture on the arm of the couch.

Dean even made an extra bedroom for them, magically appearing on the top floor, because he’s not entirely comfortable with their new favorite activity taking place in his childhood bedroom, or any of the rooms that never even belonged to him.

Dean’s all but forgotten about the books, and the memories have faded into the background or don’t come at all. The phantom mark on his arm fades to almost nothing. He can’t remember the last time he saw a replay of his death. He’s able to lock himself into this one time, not being pulled like putty between the different worlds. Who needs all that when he’s got this?

When he’s got Cas pressing him up against the kitchen counter, hands in his hair and his shirt and roving lower where their hips are already rolling. When he’s got Cas breathing promises into his ear and whispering his name like a prayer. Tracing it onto his skin with his lips, his tongue, and his mouth - god, his mouth is _everywhere_. 

Everything Dean receives he gives in kind, with earnest.

It feels like - what’s the saying? - like he’s died and gone to heaven. Yeah, he’s starting to get that, and it’s a damn shame it’s taken so long, given the setting.

It feels like it’s been a lifetime of them together like this and it’ll last several more, indefinitely. Until that semi-truck comes blaring through again, right into the middle of Dean’s carefully crafted paradise. Right when it was getting so good.

He can’t recall the moment when he and Cas let go of each other, if they meant to let go or if they slipped, but when he turns back, Cas is standing there, fully dressed, trench coat and all. 

“I have to go. There’s been an… upset in the garrison."

It’s at this exact moment that Dean realizes that he didn’t savor any of it nearly enough. He should have known. Maybe he’d embellished whatever it was he thought they’d started.

He says nothing and Cas' face twists with worry, so instead Dean smiles and says, “Okay."

“I’ll be back as soon as I can."

This is the only time Cas ever warned of his comings and goings, or acknowledged them at all, but Dean takes that only as the smallest comfort that he might mean it.

“Okay."

And then, in the moment before Cas is about to disappear, against better judgment, Dean adds, “This is why I never told you."

Cas stops, mid-turn. “What?"

“In… in the other timeline. Why I didn’t want you to know, that I - ” It’s still hard to say, especially now.

“I don’t understand."

“You were never going to _stay_ , Cas.”

“Dean - "

He shakes his head to stop him. "I know you wanted to, I know you really thought you were _going_ to, but you wouldn’t have."

“If you asked me to - "

“Yeah, well. Maybe I could have, but it would have been selfish. There’s always something bigger and better calling you, and it’s okay, I get it. The same way I could never give up the hunting life, you could never give up the angel life."

“I would have, I -"

“Please, Cas, spare me the bullshit. You said you _knew_ me, well, let me return that favor. I know you, Cas, and I know you would have never done it lightly, but you still would have left. Please believe me when I tell you it’s okay."

“I’m sorry, Dean. But I will come back."

Dean shrugs, smiles, and then Cas is gone.

 _Never believed in happy endings anyway._ He’s dead already, after all.

 

/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\

 

Dean's life had been a series of vignettes, added together into something that resembled an actual story that makes sense, while looking back on it. In the midst of it all, it went more like _okay, well I’m in Iowa so let’s do as the Iowans do_. In almost any state, _do as the locals do_  ended up being universal: get drunk, hook up. It worked, it was easy. But outside of that, he had no direction, no clear goal in mind, other than to kill the bad guy and stay alive. 

And in that, ultimately, he failed, and he’s constantly reminded.

By his death scene still replaying over and over.

By the accomplishments of his not-so-little little brother in the lake films.

By the books, the other timeline, in which they’re both alive, but not well.

And something is _different_ between Dean and Cas, and not the obvious bit, but the fact that other than that, _nothing has changed_.

Dean had thought it would. He'd thought it was supposed to, after admitting feelings and having sex. That it’d have some big profound effect on their relationship, in their day to day, and the fact that it didn’t kind of pissed him off.

Because he’s tired of being wrong. Because he’d thought it would make him hate being dead a little less. Because he’d thought, for once, that he’d finally be able to get someone to stick around.

But Cas is still gone nearly as much as he’s there, and Dean’s left to dodge the pile driver memories on his own.

“Where do you go when you’re not here?” He tries to ask, again.

“I have a job to do. I’m a soldier of heaven."

What that job is remains a mystery, answering the question by not really answering. Dean sends him off with a sarcastic _have fun at work, honey,_ and dives into the lake like he could wash away his childish jealousy. 

He knows that in relative terms, he’s got it good. Compared to the other timeline, at least, it’s not _bad_. 

Sam’s life is infinitely better, and that Dean doesn’t have to qualify. It’s obvious. It’s a fact. And his daughter loves Sam more than anything, he’s nothing like the father that John was, and Dean’s proud of him for that. He doesn’t think he’d be able to say the same for himself, if he were in those shoes. 

He’d been able to fake it alright, with Lisa and Ben, because he'd known the part he was supposed to play, but he’d also known that the situation was temporary. He could make the sacrifices he needed to be a good boyfriend and father figure, because it wasn’t forever. The road had never stopped calling.

It’s still calling. The Impala parked on the street, crying, and literally melting in the sunlight beating down. The paint and wax are dripping, exposing bare metal, and the roof and hood and trunk are caving in as if by some invisible weight.

He’s abandoned it.

He feels guilty.

For a lot of things, like the fact that he’s slipping into unfounded depression, but this time he lets the car be the excuse. Fallen into disrepair, just like himself.

 

/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\

 

The irritating itch on his arm turns into a constant, unforgiving burn. Sometimes, out of the corner of his eye, he thinks he really can see a mark, but when he looks his skin remains clear, as always.

But the handprint on his shoulder doesn’t fade away anymore. He guesses it’s because by this point he’s spent so much time in such direct contact with Cas that it’s grown stronger. Remains imprinted as an afterimage even after they’re no longer pressed together, not allowing enough time before their next encounter to fade properly.

And that one he can see now, if he looks for it. The skin is pinker and raised ever so slightly, growing more like it was in the books, that wall between the timelines ever crumbling. Even while Cas is gone, he can feel it buzzing, sometimes tingling like it’s a limb waking up after falling asleep. Sometimes it just feels like Cas is actually touching him.

It’s welcome where the phantom burn on his arm is not. Putting him in a near constant sour mood, irritable. Like whatever flame is fueling it is insatiable, fueled by his temper. It’s the archangels all over again: the burn makes him angry, and the angrier he gets, the hotter the fire.

He needs a distraction, and as much as sex helps, he doesn’t want to it - or Cas - to be something he _uses_ , because that’s -

At any rate, it doesn’t do him any good when Cas is gone.

Reading is a distraction, only he doesn’t think it’s a great alternative. Just different, the lesser of two evils, maybe, because that version is slipping just as hard as this dead one. They may as well just be the same damn person.

He can’t bring himself to sit in the house when it’s empty anymore. He goes out to read in the Impala, because even if he isn’t going anywhere at least if feels like he _could_. So it’s better, sagging roof and all, it’s still better, but when he tries to open the door it won’t budge an inch, and the key won’t fit in the lock because the metal’s all twisted up inside.

His car is trashed. Why does he always end up here?

He throws the book to the street and slams his fists down on the roof, leaving imprints of his hands, and the melting paint sticks to his skin.

That spot on his arm flares and burns, fierce, like it’s laughing at him, so he doesn’t read. Never really wanted to anyway, because over there Sam’s mostly dead and Cas is human and Dean’s all messed up (on that last count he feels it would be the same in any number of infinite timelines).

He’s exactly where started when he died, all those years ago. ( _Years, goddamnit_.) He doesn’t know exactly how long anymore because time doesn’t exist in heaven and he’s got two lives dwelling simultaneously in his head and he’s really losing which one was real.

He tries to hide this from Cas, because he thinks there’s something wrong with him, but sometimes he’ll let his mind wander into a memory or into a book and suddenly, he’ll look around and not know where he is. Or how old he is, and he can’t remember the steps he took. 

He’s exactly where he started, fixing up his car, and it might as well be a repeat of his death scene. _Crash_.

He wants to kill something. It’s been too long. 

But all he can do is fix his car and hope it fixes his life (death) too.

There’s a ghost of John sitting in the driver’s seat as Dean tries to pry the door open. Chiding him that he should take better care of his things. That if he’d known Dean would trash the car he wouldn’t have given it to him in the first place. They’ve had this fight too many times, which probably means John’s right.

When has Dean ever deserved nice things?

The door is open, John is gone, but Tessa’s sitting in the backseat. " _Time to let go, Dean_."

“Fuck you. It’s your fault I’m here anyway."

_"Is that what you think?"_

His head snaps up to where she’s sitting but she’s already gone. He must have imagined her, speaking at the very least, because she’s never said that before and the memories never break script.

Only Cas talks to him.

Cas, who starts watching him again like it’s back to day one, Blue Eyes standing ten feet away and staring curiously, apologizing for nothing, while Dean’s buried in the hood. Dean snaps at him when he suggests taking a break, doesn’t kiss back when Cas tries to soothe him. 

Eventually, Cas leaves him alone, but that’s worse.

Eventually, the Impala is fixed, but Dean still doesn’t have anywhere to go.

Eventually, he yells at Cas and Cas yells back, a sledgehammer that knocks him back into the real world (or whatever heaven is considered).

He doesn’t apologize for his bad mood, because honestly he’s isn’t sorry, and when Cas wraps an arm around his shoulders to lead him inside, fingers pressed firmly to that spot on his shoulder, the spark is enough to make him forget about the burn on his arm. For now.

Something had gotten knocked loose and the sledgehammer wedged it back into place.

Everything is fine. Or will be fine. (Might be fine.)

 

/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\

 

They’re lying in bed waiting to watch the sunrise through the widow that’s magically twice the size it usually is. It hasn’t started yet, but the sky has begun to lighten from its devastatingly black night, the stars starting to recess back into hiding for the day. 

They’re a mess of tangled legs above the sheets, Dean’s leaning with this back against Cas, who has his arm draped across Dean’s shoulders. The first half of the night was spent wrapped in lazy kisses and the second, just like this, in silence and closeness.

Dean’s thinking, and then he’s thinking out loud without really meaning to.

“Does it even mean anything to you?” He can feel the heat of a flush creeping up his chest and into his cheeks as he realizes he’s spoken aloud. He shouldn’t have, but he does want (need) to know.

“What do you mean?"

“I mean…” He could brush it off, move on. “Nothing, it doesn’t matter."

Except that it does. A lot. And Dean can't stop fidgeting and Cas can tell there’s something wrong, tries shifting so he can see Dean’s face, but he won't let him. 

The sunrise has almost started, almost, but it's gotten stuck.

“Sex."

“Do you - "

“Does it mean anything to you?"

Cas stills beneath him and that’s it, Dean knows he’s overstepped, trying to _talk_  about it, because they haven’t talked about whatever this is that they’ve been doing, they’ve just _done_. He assumes things because it makes him feel better, and he bases judgments off his book life that he probably never lived.

“Why would you ask me that?"

Dean doesn’t know if that counts as an answer, doesn’t know what it’s supposed to mean. So he barrels on, stumbling over his words. “It’s just that it’s such a stupid human thing. It’s crude and it’s messy and angels are…” he doesn’t have the word, but close as he can get is, “better than that."

“Dean, angels are not immune to romantic love, even if it is uncommon."

“I wasn’t talking about _love_ , I - "

And suddenly Cas shifts, and Dean’s no longer leaning against him but back against the pillows, and Cas is straddled above him, arms on either side of his shoulders, and glaring down at him with piercing blue.

“Yes. You were."

It takes all the resolve Dean has not to squirm under his stare, instead letting himself melt the heat that radiates from his body, but that’s just the thing - 

“This isn’t even your body,” he murmurs, as he lifts a hand and runs his fingers along Cas' arm. "You don’t really even have one."

“I can still feel just the same."

He grips tight on Cas' arm, suddenly afraid to let him go, and Cas moves closer, shifts his weight and presses a thigh between Dean's legs. Even such little contact is enough, breathing quickening and heart racing for reasons not tied to anxieties.

And even though Cas doesn't seem to be faring much better, Dean can't help himself, he rambles on.

“It’s okay if… because sometimes sex is just _sex_ , and it’s okay if - "

“Don’t lecture me, Dean,” Cas growls, and he presses himself even closer. And Dean can feel his breath on his face. “I’m not a child. I’m a thousand years older than you."

Dean’s left too breathless to respond. Cas leans in so close, lips brushing Dean’s ear and he whispers, “All those nameless women over the years, Dean. I never understood why it couldn’t have been me."

He bites. Dean gasps.

“We both know you wanted it."

Soft lips, gentle tongue at his neck and he shivers. He can’t even defend himself, just lets Cas keep whispering, with him whimpering.

“We both wanted it."

Dean knows he’s lost whatever argument he tried to start and all he can do now is drag Cas' face up to meet his own. No words anymore, too much effort to form them when there are better things they can be doing with their tongues, better ways to talk through touch, even if it’s really just a way to _not_ say it.

Somehow their layer of clothing has vanished, and Cas keeps rocking back and forth, no time to waste because they’ve decided to race the sunrise so they don’t miss it. 

They’ve been here before but somehow each time feels brand new.

On his back, fingers digging into the skin on Cas' hips as he moves.

He can’t remember what he was so worried about. Not now, not here, with Cas leaning into him, pressed deep and close, and his breath coming in pants on Dean’s neck.

Dean gets lost in it, eyes closed, until Cas lays a soft kiss on his lips and whispers, “Does this feel meaningless?"

“No. God no,” he rasps. “ _Cas_ \- "

“Open your eyes, Dean."

There’s a gentle hand caressing his face, in contrast to everything else, prodding his gaze to meet darkened blue eyes that glitter in place of all the runaway stars.

Light is leaking out from Cas' skin, from his pores and all the loose ends where he can’t hold himself together anymore, his mind elsewhere and lost in barely coherent thought, as he starts moving faster, grips tighter.

They’ve lost the race, but Cas outshines the sun as it rises above the horizon. Beautiful and immensely terrifying. 

Dean lifts a hand to trace along Cas' lips, and Cas shudders as soon as Dean’s fingertips brush his skin. At last, they fall.

 

/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\

 

The next time he’s struck with the urge to read, when whatever reality is starts slipping again, he grabs for an old volume instead, and as he thumbs through the pages it occurs to him: somewhere along the way, he’d forgotten how to have fun.

It’s less obvious in heaven, but even here he lets himself forget that it’s allowed, sometimes. But that other timeline, it’s like the longer that Dean lives, the more fun is squeezed out of him, with each new evil, getting bigger and badder each time. The exact opposite of what they hoped to achieve by fighting. What the hell did they break and how does he fix it?

Being dead has forced him into a sort of stasis, but during his life he never sat still, not in any way that mattered. As soon as he thinks this it’s like his muscles start to thaw. He needs to _move,_  literally and figuratively. But as always, since he got here, he doesn’t know what to _do_.

Better to think it over on a (metaphorically) full stomach.

“Peach pie."

He strides into the kitchen with a bucket full of ripe peaches handpicked from the tree, and expects to see Cas waiting, but apparently in his excitement he forgot to call.

“Cas!” 

And there he is like he’s been present all along.

“We’re making peach pie."

“Peach?" 

“Yes. It’s my favorite."

"We’ve never had peach before."

“Exactly.” 

“But why - "

They could go in these circles all day. Once he let it roll for roundabout an hour until he started to lose his mind and caved, but now there’s no time to waste.

“ _Cas_. Just shut up and help me."

Dean does have an ulterior motive other than delicious pie, but he keeps it to himself for now.

The first step of his _force myself to be in a good mood_ to do list is to see his mom. She’s been elusive recently, ever since his life (death) started feeling dark and clouded, and he figures there’s no better way to draw her out than making peach pie like the two of them used to do way back when.

Only this time he’s the one doing the cooking, and Cas is the one commenting. 

The first pie, he burns.

He lets out a stream of curses as he leans over the oven, and then there’s Tessa leaning there with him, whispering, “Let it go, Dean."

She looks him right in the eye like she’s really there and then vanishes. Cas doesn’t seem to have noticed a thing.

The second pie is decent. It’s not great, but it’s not blackened and on fire like the first one, so they eat it. Cas has got flour smudged on his cheek and on his shirt and Dean’s not faring much better, and his hands are sticky from all the sugar.

Still no Mary.

Third time’s the charm, right? That's how it goes?

The third pie is actually _good_. Like, really good. They each eat a slice and then Dean makes them wait. He shuts his eyes and imagines the first time he remembers cooking with his mom. Concentrates with everything he has, tires to remember everything she said, and then - he can hear her laugh.

He opens his eyes and there she is, along with his two-year-old self on the other side of the kitchen, in the middle of a pie making session. 

There _might_ be tears welling in his eyes, but he pretends there aren’t and Cas thankfully doesn’t say a word.

Step one complete. Step two: not a fucking clue.

 

/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\

 

When he finally reads the words it’s like he’s been thrust back into that cartoon dream world of that old guy from that one time. Namely, a lightbulb popping up, brightly lit, above his head, and Tessa across the room with too-big eyes and a thought bubble floating next to her containing a big fat _I told you so_.

 _Not my fault after all_ , she’s thinking.

The Mark of Cain. Entirely Dean’s fault. That other Dean, or no, again, not exactly because he can remember it, almost. He’s lost the line completely between _that_ and _this_ and - does it matter any more?

Of course it doesn’t.

He doesn’t bother reading the rest of the books. He doesn’t have to. There isn’t actually anymore appearing on the shelf, although it’s hard to tell from a glance, considering the sheer number of them that have amassed by this point. Nonetheless, he knows.

Just like he knows, now, that bullshit mess that got him stuck up here in heaven in the first place. It’s all there in his head, flying around like gnats, and he just needs to stop swatting them away for it all to make sense.

Dean made a deal with Death.

He traces over the place on his skin where the mark should be, would be, he can see it in his head but there’s nothing there. He traces, until after a while all those details slowly, methodically click into place, the last of the pebbles in a rainstick settling down, the end of some manmade natural disaster. Those pesky little gnats with their minuscule lifespans all fall down dead to join him.

There had been several iterations of the deal, several wordings and he could see how, maybe, it could be split into several other timelines, like tossing dice, but he chose the only one he could live with. Well, not _live_ with, exactly.

Of course, Dean couldn’t have been killed with the Mark on his arm. Of course, Death did not really want to cooperate with him. But they both saw that proverbial darkness looming. For Dean it was more that thing inside of himself than the literal horror that Death knew. For Dean there was little difference.

With one toss of the dice, Death could die, or, not exactly. He could not be killed in the sense that we know, but _something_ dire would happen. Death couldn’t let this pass.

Another toss of the dice and they both knew the Darkness would come, if it were allowed to happen, with one alternative, yet another toss of the dice, to make sure it was never allowed even a _possibility_ in the first place. Way back when. It’s almost impossible to tell what specific incident was the first piece of this puzzle, so much better to go even farther back.

Long before it ever had a chance to plant the seed. Long before Dean even knew the extent of what he could one day be mixed up in.

Not the best solution, but a better one. Or, at the very least, something that in good conscience could actually be called a solution, as opposed to the big fat nothing they had going for a years. 

The catch, of course, is that now that it’s all back, both timelines really have mixed and coexist in some sort of weird loop. Time has caught up with itself. Nine years from when he didn’t die, and nine years dead. The Mark is trying to find its way back, burning onto his skin, fighting for it’s place.

So he tries to burn it _off_ , instead, but Cas catches him with the lighter, now knowing as much as Dean knows, as it works here.

“The Mark can’t exist in heaven, Dean.”

“The fuck you mean it can’t exist? _Look_.”

It had been sneaking up on him for years. Every little itch and ache, little twinges of guilt, repressed memories and all that bullshit, unable to feed it with killing but with fucking depression instead. It has been feeding off his own death, maybe. And now that he has a name for it, it’s solidified its way back in, clinging to him full force.

“It’s a symbol of hell,” Cas continues. “It’s not real, not here.”

Dean’s not so sure he believes it, but he can’t determine if that’s his own belief or if the Mark is just egging him on.

And then there’s Tessa again. Or still. “Let it go, Dean.”

“Fuck you.” Directed at either her or Cas, the Mark or himself, it doesn’t matter.

Tessa smiles ruefully and disappears. Cas stands still and watches, forehead creased, one hand in his pocket and the other just inches from his side, wanting to reach out but held fast, unsure how to help.

Dean traces the Mark again, but there’s nothing there, he can still only see it in his head. He shuts his eyes. Still there.

“Dean, I think - if you just stop thinking about it - “

“Easier said than done. Give me my lighter back.”

Cas doesn’t move.

“Christ, Cas. I’m not going to use it, just give it back.”

“No. If you’re not going to use it, then you don’t need it.”

Later, Dean makes some matches appear in a kitchen drawer and uses them to burn a few books. It doesn’t help.

Later, Cas tries to bring it up again.

“You’re dwelling on the past too much.”

“ _Dwelling on the past_?” He waves a hand around, exasperated. “Take a look around, Cas. Everything here is my past, and I didn’t choose to put it here. Can’t really ignore it when it’s constantly shoved in my face.”

“So get rid of it.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s how it works; you know this. And how do you think it’s here in the first place?”

“Oh, don’t you fucking blame this all on me. Fuck you.”

“I’m not blaming anyone.”

It’s worse because he knows Cas is right. It’s worse because he’s already had this revelation, and he tried to fix it, but like in most of his endeavors, he failed. It’s worse because he really did want to drown himself in the good memories, but he just can’t separate them from the bad. They coexist. They feed off of each other like he feeds off of them, because one can’t exist without the other.

It isn’t fair.

But that’s life. (Death.)

Much later, Cas gives him his lighter back. Dean’s too tired to do anything but slip it into his pocket. Too tired to do much of anything but stare off at nothing. Into the void. But it’s good; he can no longer see the Mark when he closes his eyes. He almost can’t feel it, other than the phantom movements of his finger tracing it. But that’s not the Mark, that’s just him. That’s okay.

Later, Cas tries to bring it up again by not bringing it up.

“What would make you happy?”

“I’m fine, Cas.”

“Are you - “

“ _Cas._ ”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop fucking apologizing. That would make me happy. It’s not your fault. Just mine.”

Later, he forces himself to stop thinking about it, but knowingly forgetting something is not the same as actually forgetting. The thought replaced with the determination not to think is barely better.

Later, he lets Cas distract him.

Eventually, it all gets drowned out, more or less, by the handprint buzzing. Eventually he gets caught off guard and laughs at a joke Cas makes, lets stupid memories claw their way back in to cheer him up. Eventually, he realizes that he’s going to have to do something to put an end to this elastic up and down he keeps getting forced through, because it’s not going to go anywhere on its own, and eventually it’s going to tear him in two - and he just got all his pieces back together.

 

/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\

 

Dean doesn’t understand heaven. He really doesn’t, and that’s a very well researched statement, because he’s been here _years_ now, more or less. What a fucking waste.

What exactly is the point of living a life and dying only to spend an eternity all alone up here reliving some weirdo messed up version of a relatively shitty life to begin with?

He mentions this to Cas who just stares at him bewildered like Dean’s sprouted a second head that’s currently doing all the talking and it’s completely missed the point. 

But no, he really hasn’t, and the absolute truth of it all is that Dean just so happens to be  _lucky._ Probably for the first time in his life (death) _._ So goddamn lucky because he’s got Cas up here with him in his supposed-to-be-lonely-heaven and he doesn’t dare say this one out loud because he’s convinced it has to be some sort of fluke, and if he acknowledges it the universe will realize its mistake and take it all away. No way he’s going to let that happen.

“Are you… okay?” Adorable little squinty-eyed Cas face.

Dean’s got a goofy grin on his face, he can feel it, he knows it’s ridiculous but there’s no reason to care, other than it’s making Cas suspicious.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Cas. I’m doing fucking fantastic."

Because he’s had a strike of sudden  _genius_. Well, to be honest, the thought crossed his mind once or twice before in passing, but it was never meant to be taken seriously. A joke. Or when he was really pissed off. Like one might casually comment that they _will punch someone directly in the face_  when they’re being a belligerent asshole, just to make a point with no intended followthrough.

Dean never honest to god meant that he really would burn down his house, except, of course, right now he is dead fucking serious. (Ha, _dead_ , get it?) 

It’s actually a pretty perfect plan, and he’s giddy with excitement he can feel bubbling over, and he grabs Cas' arm and starts pulling him quickly over to the Impala parked on the street.

“Dean, what are you doing?” His tone is warning, because he’s not stupid, he knows Dean is up to something that probably _is_ stupid, and it’s up to him to put a stop to it.

Well, not this time, buddy.

Dean throws the trunk up and there it is right in the middle, a red jerry can that he wouldn’t normally store, actually full of gasoline, but man has he gotten real good at manipulating his heaven to get whatever he wants.

“ _Dean."_

 _“_ Ready for a little fire, Cas?"

“I have no idea what you’re about to do, but I’m fairly certain you haven’t thought it through."

“Eh.” He shrugs and grabs the can. “Maybe not.”  And he shoots Cas what he hopes is an alluring grin, but _whatever_ , Cas is going to follow him anyway. “But it’s going to be fun. Let’s go."

He leads them back into the house and as soon as they’re inside, Dean opens the top of the jerry can and starts trailing gasoline behind them as they slowly meander through the house, up the stairs, then back down. There’s no need to worry about running out of gas or needing a refill, it just keeps coming, one of those heaven perks.

Cas keeps quiet for most of it, but Dean can feel him buzzing beside him the whole way. Probably has _too many_  things to say and can’t just decide which to choose as they run through his head too fast to catch.

He finally settles on, “Why are you always trying to burn things?"

First it was the books, and maybe he  _accidentally_ burned the pie a few times, but that’s not at all the same. He knows what Cas means though.

“I don’t know, man. Salt and burn was drilled into me for years. Bad habit?” 

He pours the last of the gasoline over the couch and starts leading them back to the front door; the house is coated and the smell was starting to get to him.

“Or, often while hunting, a life saving habit.” 

Cas glares. “But you don't hunt anymore. And I don’t see how it’s prudent. Fire is destructive by nature."

“What about wildfires?” He tries. “Aren’t those technically okay?"

“Yes, but - "

“Exactly. But I guess that’s not really my point. So... my life was ruined by a fire when I was four. Or maybe it was set in motion, I don’t know. But fire just seems like an effective way to end things. Always has."

And an end to one thing is the start of something new. _That’s_ his point.

So yeah, he should feel bad about burning down the house that already burned once, and it probably should be somewhere more along the lines of  _traumatic_ than _remedial_. But the way he sees it, that fire is where it all began. Obviously. He was really too young before then to remember anything, and the cross-country man(demon)hunt that ensued became his life and even if it sucked most of the time, _that was his life_. 

He’s not really into the meant-to-be crap, but he could be convinced on a few counts. In this particular case, he’s sick of sitting around thinking _it should have been different,_ etc., because maybe it happened the way it was supposed to have happened. Thinking otherwise has gotten him nowhere except an out of control spiral of depression, it won’t get him anywhere else no matter what he does, so that's it. He’s done playing out all those fantasies of what a perfect life could have been like. Trying to use it all to fill the holes he’s carved where he thinks they should have been anyway.

So what. He’s spent so long trying to make things into what they so clearly aren’t, and he’s done. 

Sure he’s dead, but for what it’s worth this is basically the same as being alive only with fewer channels, a remote that tends to have a mind of its own, and a handful of extraneous conveniences. 

But Cas is still worried and waiting for a more satisfactory explanation.

“End things?"

“Look, Cas, you said it yourself the other day. I’m not doing myself any favors by dwelling on the past, but it’s not _my_ fault that that just happens to be how heaven’s set up. Error in judgment on their part. Whoever they are -" he holds up a hand, "and I don’t want to know, Cas, so stop.” 

Clearly, Cas is literally biting his tongue to stop from commenting. 

“Consider it therapy, consider it moving on, just consider it actually doing something instead of just laying here like a wet fucking blanket. So what do you say, Cas?” he asks, holding out a hand. “You with me?”

He sighs but nods. “You know I'd follow you anywhere, Dean."

“Fuckin’ right. Now. _Let’s burn Memory Lane_."

He doesn’t take Dean’s offered hand, because he’s still not thrilled even if he has jumped on the bandwagon, but Dean just rolls his eyes and takes Cas' hand anyway, if only to press one of the matchbooks into his palm.

“This isn’t what I had in mind when I told you to look forwards."

“Never said it was.” 

But Cas still hesitates in following him when Dean takes a step towards the house.

“Oh come on, Cas, it’s not like I’m plotting murder here - "

“No, just arson,” he snaps. "And metaphorically speaking - "

“Yeah, I don’t do those. And you’re missing the point. Nothing here is real anyway."

Cas opens his mouth to protest again, but Dean shakes his head to stop him and takes a few steps to close the distance between them and kisses him.

It takes a moment for Cas to get past the surprise and fall into it, but by then Dean is already leaning back, one hand still on the back of Cas’ neck and the other resting at his hip.

“I’m real and you’re real, and that’s all I need."

He kisses him again, slower, and then he’s backing away towards the house, genuinely worried that Cas is just standing there stock still and expressionless, because that’s it. Dean’s pulled out all the stops and he doesn’t know how else to explain to him how much he needs this.

But he tries to play it cool, daring Cas with his eyes to challenge _that_  logic, because if he says so himself that was pretty damn romantic, and he doesn’t usually do that.

And then there’s a grin spreading slowly and lighting up Cas' whole face as he _finally_ understands what it is that Dean’s been trying to say. 

He surges forward to catch up to where Dean’s still backing towards the front door and Dean pumps his fist in the air and shouts, “Now that’s what I’m talking about!"

“Lucky for you, it’s impossible to accidentally burn to death in heaven. So in that regard, at least, this can’t go wrong."

“Great vote of confidence, Cas,” he says, slinging an arm over his shoulder as they trek back across the yard.

“If it touches you, it’ll be warm, it might _tickle_ , for lack of a better word, but it won’t hurt. So it’ll be very easy to set the fire"

“Good. Great."

Now that they’re both on the same page and Cas has begun to appreciate the _prudence_  of the fire setting plan, his enthusiasm has swelled to match.

The moment they walk through the door, the smell of the gas hits them like a tidal wave, and Dean is thankful for once that he doesn’t actually have to breathe or he wouldn’t be able to stand it for more than a few seconds. 

“Because in any normal situation,” Cas says, “walking into a building doused in gasoline and striking a match would mean almost immediate death."

“Well, lucky for us that I’m already dead and something as petty as _fire_  has got nothing on you."

“Yes, lucky us."

What comes next is a frenzy of fire and flame and heat and it’s glorious. First the house and then slowly making their way down the lane, each building, each memory one by one, and all the weight that’s been crushing him goes up in smoke. Up, up, and away. Going, going, gone.

He breaths in the smoke. Watches the reflection of the fire bouncing in Cas’ eyes, orange on blue in a stunning combination, and they’re both grinning from ear to ear.

The whole world is on fire and for once, it’s not a bad thing. This is the real second chance that he’s been waiting for and the reason he knows it’s not too good to be true is because _he made it happen himself,_ because he wanted to, and not as a last resort to avoid utter catastrophe _._ Can’t trust those opportunities handed out on silver platters, but this much he can do.

“What now, Cas?"

“I want to keep watching until it burns out.” 

It takes a few days, a few days of heaven’s standards, which could mean anything, and this time he doesn’t care. Forever laid out in front of him doesn’t feel so daunting this time around. 

They walk through the ashes, walk down the pavement of the dead Memory Lane and all the ghosts that flicker in the smoke, but he doesn’t let them form. Not for now at least; he needs a break from the past. He needs to keep looking forward, he needs to keep moving, because of just who he is. He’d let himself forget for a while, but he’s back.

The Impala is waiting for them once they make it back to where the house used to be. Shiny and pristine in the ashy world.

“Want to take a drive, Cas? See what we can find?"

He’s back to where he started when he died. Sitting behind the wheel and staring at sunsets. Staring out at a road of possibilities. Only this time is nothing like the first. He’s feeling hopeful. He’s feeling _lighter_. And he’s not alone. 

“Where are we going?” Cas asks.

“Anywhere. You name it. But first – ” he’d almost forgotten - "I think there’s an ocean around here somewhere that I’d like to see."

For the first time, he thinks (in all its cliché glory) that maybe this really is heaven.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE END.
> 
> If you've made it this far, THANK YOU, you rock, I hope you enjoyed it. I had fun writing this, and I'm glad to finally share it, and see it all come together with the illustrations. 
> 
> If you are so inclined, let me know what you think in the comments and/or come hang out with me on [tumblr](http://www.slayerandtheslayerettes.tumblr.com).
> 
> And thanks again to artist bowandbow and beta deanghostchester!


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